This changed 6-12 months ago. At some point, GMail's "Starred First" and "Starred" mail views started sorting conversations by the most recently starred email. This means that new replies to old starred conversations can entirely miss my attention, because they show up on page two (or further back). How can I avoid/fix this?
EDIT: This has gotten worse since the mobile app has lost the ability to star specific emails in a thread.
Best Answer
If you hover over the Inbox button in gmail, it will give you a drop down arrow. You need to change this from "Stared First" to "Unread First". This will still reserve your conversations, and they will just pop to the top of the list when someone replies. Just look for the stars to see the important one, or add flags to add more organization to different types of contacts.
All of the read conversations will be in a separate section called "Everything Else"
Good Luck!