@jsick – see the attached screenshot: is it a bug that there is a new topic (note the ‘* new’ next to ‘What documents can be accessed …’ topic), while the topic is not marked (or shown as) new when I click on the ‘New’ tab on the top?
What is your status in the category? Watching, Tracking, Normal, or Muted?
My understanding is that ‘Latest’ is for any new activity in topics you’re following. But the ‘New’ tab means that there’s a ‘new’ topic you haven’t seen yet.
If you look at a topic it’ll get dropped from ‘New’. But if there’s a reply to that topic, it’ll bubble up in ‘Latest’
So, it’s a new topic, I haven’t read it yet, but it’s not showing up anywhere on the top (neither under New nor Unread (the (1) in unread is for a different one). If I didn’t happen to notice it on the list, I would’ve missed it (I actually did miss it, but someone @-ed me there so I went looking for it). It does look like a bug.
(Discourse does seem to be inconsistent with “Normal” in one place and “Regular” in another.)
I think that status means that you don’t see “New” topics in your “New” page or get notifications about them. They still get labeled as new. So I think this is expected behavior. You want to Track the category, at least.
I don’t think that’s it – I’m ‘Regular’ everywhere, and other topics do appear.
PS: One thing that’s different is that this particular topic was split off from a different one. It still looks like an insect to me 
.