A forum feature request.

[Spook]

Can we have a way to turn off certain parts of the forum, because personally I really don't want "german discussion" topics in my unread list.

[Cameron]

Great Idea.  I think there is a way to close sections but it still counts as unread.

[jitspoe]

Not sure if there's an easy way to do that.  I know you can go into a specific forum and mark all the threads read, but that just clears them out for the moment.  You might try asking around on the SMF forums to see if there's an option or mod for that.

[Zorchenhimer]

This sounds like it would be a pain to do.

I found this on the SMF Mod site though:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=137

But it isn't being developed anymore and it is incompatible with version 1.1.4:

I am leaving the ignoreboard_v1-1.zip file up for SMF 1.0 users but it has not been updated.  Version 2.0 is for SMF 1.1 ONLY

Edit:
Found one called "Unread Posts by Category" but a few people have had some installation issues with it.
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=609