Back to topic, there may appear to be plenty of space on the top bar to you Robin but there are already a number of other buttons up there (mainly site control stuff).
....I think that we're all quite capable of handling another button (I hope so!). Or are there a great number of buttons there which are not visibe to the user?
Plus that stats tell me people prefer the "view unread posts..." option we already have.
....I wasn't suggesting that the option we already have was deleted - I was suggesting that an
additional option was offered.
You may already be aware that I have been part of the pre-release external development team for the Adobe Creative Suite for the past 6 years. As a direct consequence I have learnt that offering a user more than one option in an interface is highly desirable. Most people probably do it the way your stats tell you because of what the current options are. It's actually your reasoning which I find difficult to agree with rather than whether there is an additional option offered or not.
But, this is not a subject which is critical for the enjoyment or functionality of this site, so no problem.