Placemarking can be very annoying, especially when a thread is filling up fast as people wait for the OP to return. However I am very guilty of it.
This got me to thinking about why I do it. And my reason is that I only every really look at my TIO feed and I don't really bother with the watching one. Now of course I could just sort my lazy arse out and actually click on the watching button, but I forget. Also, I like the deletion message if there is one, rather than a thread simply vanishing.
So I thought, why not have watching threads mixed in with the TIO. So a TIO feed would be a mixture of the two and work in the same way. It would look the same but perhaps you could have 'Watching' next to the title so you know you haven't actually posted on it.
Yes I know that I should change the way I use MN rather than expecting MN to change to suit me but I know I'm not the only person to do this.
It reminds me of desire lines that you see in the park; paths worn where people actually chose to walk rather than where the path is meant to be. Place marking is simply a desire line of how to use MN.