OK, so maybe it was a lot longer than three weeks. The problem exacerbates over time. I'm away for two weeks, come back and it's 1200 unread messages. "GEEZ, I don't have time to read all that now!" Get pulled away for another week, and so on. All I know is by the time I finally decided to tackle the monster there were over 2700 unread messages.
The threads that are clearly marked as you describe aren't the problem. It's when an on-topic thread strays off-topic in 27 different places, yet there are still on-topic branches here and there that are worth reading if you can find them.
Clearly, you spent just a little too much time trying to track down my posting habits so you could feel justified in bitching at my bitching, but you're more than just a little off base my friend. Those posts are a side-effect of my popping in here only a few times over the span of several weeks and being completely overwhelmed by the unread traffic, and my replies (as I recollect) were mostly to "pals" of mine in light-hearted context, to a few of the most-recent threads that I actually stumbled upon and had the time say a little something about before giving up and living the rest of my life. If all the participants in this group only averaged 9 off-topic replies over the span of three weeks or a month, then I don't think there would by ANY problem keeping up with the traffic, do you? Most "offenders" in the group can average more than 9 off-topic posts within the span of about an hour.