Following a topic does not change anything you read. Your Inspirations feed still shows the newest work from everyone. Your search results are ranked the same way they were before. The discussions feed still shows the one topic you pick from its dropdown, and that dropdown lists every topic on UNI, not the ones you follow. If you followed a handful of topics expecting your feed to narrow to them, that is why nothing looks different.
Following a topic is a bookmark you place on the topic. It is not a filter you place on UNI.
What following actually changes
- The topic stops being suggested to you. The Topics to follow card in the sidebar of the journal feed, and the same card on a publication page, only offers topics you do not already follow. The card you just followed stays on screen until you reload the page, and after that it is gone.
- Disciplines you follow are marked as followed on project pages. A project lists the disciplines it belongs to, and the ones you follow are shown as followed there.
- You are counted in the topic's follower count, the number shown on the topic page and on topic cards.
That is the whole list. There is no email and no notification when new work is posted under a topic you follow. There is also no page that lists the topics you follow back to you, so the only way to tell whether you follow a topic is to open it and read the state of its Follow button.
Following a topic is public
It is a public action, not a private preference. Each follow is published to the discussions feed at uni.xyz/topic/discussions as an activity entry naming the topic and the members who followed it, in the same stream as comments, likes and competition entries. Treat the topics you follow as visible to other members rather than as private reading history.
If the Follow button returns an error
On a topic's own page, and on the topic browser at uni.xyz/topic/all, selecting Follow currently returns Failed to update follow status and saves nothing. That is a fault on our side, not a problem with your account or your membership, and retrying will not clear it. We are fixing it.
Following does work in these two places:
- The Topics to follow card in the sidebar of the journal feed, or on a publication page.
- The disciplines listed on a project page, each of which carries its own follow control.
A follow made in either place is the same follow, and it counts on the topic page even though the button there cannot set it.
What to do instead if you want a feed of one subject
Because following does not filter anything, the way to read one subject is to go to it. Open the topic and use its tabs: projects, journals, publications, competitions and discussions are each listed for that topic alone. That is the closest thing UNI has to a per-topic feed, and it works whether or not you follow the topic.
For work you want to come back to, save the individual piece rather than the topic. Saved work is collected in one place and is genuinely yours to return to. See where to find projects you saved or liked.