It seems that suddenly I get a notice each time a new topic is added, and I have to mute if I don't want to keep receiving responses to that topic. Prior to that, I had to purposely "follow" a topic to receive updates. Is there a setting for my account where I can change this back to "mute" as the default? I'm not sure how this changed...

Ah - I went t that area but didn't see the 3 tabs in the upper left under the area title. I found them now.