I opened Author Hangout and a new thread. I responded to the thread and clicked Update. After reviewing my post, I returned to Forum. The Forum's Author Hangout was not shaded, so I clicked it. There was no new post – the most recent thread was the one I posted to and it showed me as the last poster.
This seems like a bug to me?
This often happens to me on my phone — basically the local cache isn't getting updated immediately. Usually the shading indicating all now read kicks in after viewing a couple more forums. I've learned to finish my reading run before going back to check for further replies, and if shading hasn't updated tapping reload.
I have also observed the normal behavior of Author Hangout thread being shaded far more often, than not shaded.
When I see two significantly different results from the same conditions, it makes me wonder what is happening.
This seems like a bug to me?
Not really.
If you get to the post through the 'All Threads by Date' link, then even if you access every last unread thread, its parent section doesn't get marked as read.
To mark all the sections as read, click the check mark in the top left of the 'All Threads by Date' page.
The local script that marks sections as read doesn't have access to the number and ids of ALL the topics in a section and can't assume that you're read all of the them all.
I access threads by clicking on one of the forums. For the instances I mentioned, I clicked on Author Hangout.
