quoting Travis B.:

I now am sometimes seeing posts well before any unread posts when trying to read unread posts in a thread. I know that this was somewhat intentional, but for me at least it doesn't seem to be having the effect that would be desired.

You're seeing freshly-edited posts. I saw 3 new posts in one of the conlang fluency threads today, and was a little shocked. Turned out you'd edited 3 posts.