control forum "inbox"

[Kent-Dorfman]

what control do I have over the forum "inbox" at the top left of the forum page? sometimes things appear there with no rhyme or reason, and I've searched, but cannot find any dialog to keep people from dropping things there. Most often stuff in there appears to be from discussion threads, but it's superfluous since if I want to see what's going on in a thread then I can read the thread itself.

[jeremy_k]

This thing? As the tool tip suggests, it's supposed to alert on unread messages. There's a "mark read" combo box in the upper right of the page it brings you to.

As for its utility, that's my preferred way to browse the forum. I'm generally only interested in active discussions. Sometimes after marking everything read, threads that don't have any obvious new content reappear.