Can I follow a puzzle without answering nor commenting?

Question

Is there any way on Puzzling (or I suppose on all of SE, come to think of it) to "follow" a question, so that I can check back on it at a later date and time? Quite often I see a puzzle that intrigues me, but I can't figure out enough to answer it nor even comment on it. I'd like to be able to go back to it a day or two later to see if it has an accepted answer.

What I've been doing is clicking the Star to make the question one of my "favorites", and then periodically go through my favorites list to check for an answer, read it if it's accepted, and then remove it from my favorites list. However, this strikes me as mildly rude to the Questioner, who might see his/her question's "favorite" count go down through no fault of their own, only because I'm misusing a feature of the forum.

Is there a better way to do what I describe?

Answer 1

Currently, the only way built into the platform that allows you to "follow" a puzzle is to, as you suggest, use favorites. In case you're unaware, you can also sort your favorites by "activity" to quickly see what's changed recently (there used to be a notification feature for favorites, but it got removed).

Just be aware that using favorites to follow things does have some minor, unintended consequences:

• As you note, there's a slight chance that people may be offended in some way by being unfavorited when you stop following their question¹
• Badges are awarded to users who's questions get 25/100 favorites
• Your favorites list is public information

¹ This isn't really a concern because, especially on PSE, favorites are commonly used as a follow mechanism - even the official faq page describes it as simply indicating that "that a particular user feels like watching that question".

Answer 2

Even though I don't think that anyone takes favorites THAT seriously but I can see three other ways to do it.

First is by looking at your edit history. If you have edited that question or any answer on that question then you can go to your edit history and search the question there.

Second is by looking at your vote history. If you have upvoted or downvoted that question or any answer on that question then you can go to your voting history and search the question there.

You can find these histories at right hand side of your profile in the "Impact" box.

Here is a screenshot of how it looks like:

Third way and the easiest way is by just bookmarking that question on your Internet browser.

But still, you can mark it favorite if you want to come back to that question.