The zero does not represent how many topics you are watching. We assume you know that already. The number represents how many of them have received new posts since you last looked at them.

Thanks for answering. That’s not very intuitive, it should then have said something like “New in Watched:” or “Watched: 1 new” or something similarly non-verbose to save screen space. I had this idea and tried it on my setup, however I never saw those red numbers (of new posts) because I myself was the author of the new replies and therefore had already seen them. Does the “Subscriptions” work the same way, btw? And if not, what does the number to the right of it mean?

We assume you know that already.

Not necessarily. I may have marked (“Watch”) a topic and then forgot about it. Seeing a number up there would remind me that I wanted to see the resolution of some topic some time ago. But no matter.

Well needless to see we all totally disagree and it is rare that it gets a comment. Mostly once people know how it works they are 100% happy.But is is subjective of course.
You can change the label on the button in the head template of your theme although for practical reasons, the number does need to be set to the right of any text.
Yes subscriptions (and PM Inbox) work exactly the same. And no – there is no real point in announcing a new post if the user themselves wrote it.
And finally, I guess, you can also view the lost of watched/subscribed topics in your SP profile panel.

…Mostly once people know how it works…

This is exactly what I meant when I said it wasn’t very intuitive 🙂

And no – there is no real point in announcing a new post if the user themselves wrote it.

This is granted and expected. I was just testing the function on my server and forgot/slipped my mind that it would be useless to announce my own posts to me, so I though that it was supposed to show the number of subscriptions. It all became clear when you said

The number represents how many of them have received new posts since you last looked at them.

I’m also glad it’s all clear now with this particular issue.

This is exactly what I meant when I said it wasn’t very intuitive

Ah but – we probably only get asked, on average, maybe twice a year at most. So yes – we get asked but it is very rare and Subscriptions is on eof the most used plugins we have.

Subscriptions is on eof the most used plugins we have.

Yes, but my topic was about the “Watches” plugin, not “Subscriptions” 🙂

Come on, you needn’t be so defensive. I’m a paid customer and I have the right for my feedback (unintuitive – which matters to me, because a significant % of my visitors are not web-savvy) to be accepted in a business-like form, not along the line of “your problem is insignificant because we never… well, almost never get this feature criticized”.

I really do not want to get into a slanging match but that was a pretty unhelpful and unnecessary reply. I am defending nothing. I have already stated that this is subjective right in my first answer and have not once suggested your view is ‘insignificant’. I was merely clarifying that apparently the majority of our users do not find it confusing. Subscriptions/Watches – same technique.

As I have also said – users can change virtually all label, button text, prompts etc., because the display is template driven.

@hulk1977 do you want to change the label to something more your liking?  Its pretty easy and may be useful for other labels too…  Users often do complete customizations… 

If so, do you understand how to do so in your sp theme?  We can walk you through it if needed…

Thanks for offering help. Yes, I do know how to customize/edit themes, I just don’t want to do it with SP so that I can update themes to new versions without any concerns about my custom code being lost etc. Changing the wording on a button is just isn’t worth all the hassle (editing, testing, update issues, child themes, etc.) for me. It’s fine, I think my users will figure it out eventually.

I would change it to, e.g.

“Watched: 2 (1 new)”

Still takes little screen space, but is twice as informative (the first number is the number of watched topics, the second – the number of new posts in them). But it’s just a thought, not a feature request, because as I said, I’ll be fine even as it is, it’s not that big of an issue after all 🙂

child themes are easy – we even give you the base set up… but no worries understand…