No, that's not the correct solution. A better solution would be to allow more than one watchlist—maybe up to 5 per user, 10 for donators and 25 for VIPs.
That wouldn't help my use case very much.
My choice of threads to read is based on how much time I have, so I group them into consecutively-smaller sets.
"Show unread posts since last visit" is the largest set, as it includes all forum areas I do not ignore.
"Watchlist" contains all the posts in a few key forum areas I have set to automatically watch, and the occasional one I set to manually watch.
"Show new replies to your posts" is the smallest set, and it's sometimes the only one I read due to time constraints. The only problem is that sometimes I post in a thread but don't want to ever look at it again, like the Ripple Giveaway thread. Having posts in there that I don't want to see is aggravating because frequently when I'm using that link it's because I am time constrained.
Yes, it would. If you had more than one watchlist, you can have it like this:
"Show unread posts since last visit" is the largest set, as it includes all forum areas you do not ignore.
"Watchlist A" contains all the posts in a few key forum areas I have set to automatically watch, and the occasional one I set to manually watch.
"Show new replies to your posts" is as before.
"Watchlist B" contains all replies to thread you've posted in, and gives you the ability to unwatch any threads (the functionality you want).
