Just in case it's useful for anyone else ... Within the last few weeks, WF started making a lot more alerts pop up in my alerts box ... instead of just getting a notification for tags, quotes, and rep, it seemed like I was getting notified every time somebody posted a new reply (which was pretty redundant since I use the "New Posts" button for that). Basically the alerts bar started behaving like Facebook. If this is happening for anyone else and you don't like it, the way to stop it is first to look for the little glasses icon next to threads, open each thread, and click "Unwatch thread," then hover over your username, go to "Preferences," and uncheck "Automatically watch threads that you create or when you reply."
