You should consider just tracking what the last time was each user viewed a topic. That will reduce the number of entries in your table to a maximum of one entry for each user on each topic, rather than one entry for each user on each post.
As for the delay in getting plugin “approval”, you aren’t alone. I’ve waited a while at times and had to poke for it to get done, approval is less about the question of “is your code good enough” and more about weeding out spam/bozos etc. Also, from what I understand mdawaffe is pretty much the only developer doing significant work on bbPress at Automattic and he has other responsibilities there as well (including maintaining the WordPress plugin browser).
The community here is growing, but small, and the few people who are regular contributors to this forum are really quite helpful, enthusiastic and generally pretty knowledgeable. I hope you feel more welcome as you get to know us and become more involved.
Well I’m allowed atleast one misconception aren’t I? 
WordPress has the same weird approval stage. But what I don’t get is that I wasn’t given a chance to upload either the plugin or the readme, I just input the name of the plugin and the whole process hinges on that one name.
Started wondering if I was at all comfortable with “Unread Topics” as a name 
Anyway, did you look at the plugin fel?
Jeez, you’ve totally got the wrong end of the stick here. The approval takes forever because he’s busy and working on other stuff, not because we’re in a giant elitist conspiracy that won’t host your plugins unless you’ve been on the cover of Hello!
Hi guys.
I give up with the plugin hosting approval. Apparently I’m not enough of a celebrity around these parts to be hosted. Not that I give a shit, I’d just prefer that other guys don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Besides, what the hell are they reviewing? All they have is the name of the project.
So I threw together a page about it, and threw in a zip archive of the plugin. It’s straight from my own installation, so let me know if there are any dependency issues (there shouldn’t be).
This plugin has accounting for where the user is in reading each topic. So it’s not for everyone. If you have a huuge board with alot of threads and users, you’re probably going to dislike it. However, it fits my needs, it isn’t too slow for my forum, and I’ll deal with the fallout when that happens.
So without any ado, or grace periods for the sake of elitism, here’s the damn plugin: http://henry.odg.cc/bb_unread_topics/
Not before no. Like admin approval? Not that I know of.
Trent
Yeah. Request already waiting for approval.
There has yet to be a user registration approval plugin and hopefully there is one soon! In the meantime, some users have been using the admin create user plugin so that they can turn off registration and only have the admin create users through the admin. This is the only thing even close right now!
Trent
Currently, bbPress is built so that all users must be registered to post. I have heard talk of a plugin for anonymous posting, but nothing in development to my understanding.
So far, registration on the bbPress side is wide open, but if you are integrated with WordPress there are hacks in WordPress to have admin approval for registration, but only if you change all registration for the forums to the WordPress side versus bbPress.
Trent
