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OK this has a fair chunk of stuff in it. The concept of "public" now replaces status + hidden when referring to admin listings. This solves the problem of there being two things that can determine whether or not a thread or post is visible to the public.
Both status and hidden remain but public is the combination of both along with an explanation as to why a piece of content isn't public, e.g. "This post isn't public because the thread it appears in isn't published".
Introduces the concept of "Public" to threads and posts, this is most relevant for posts though.
In a few words, as both threads and posts can be published or unpublished and posts appear within threads it can be tough to get visibility on what's public and what isn't. The new public View field and filter accounts for this and will give you an accurate idea of if a post is public or not and an explanation as to why.
Possible reasons for a post not being public would be: the thread it's in is unpublished, the post is unpublished, both!
This release whilst tagged "alpha" is in my mind "beta" as defined on the following page though I'd like there to be a bit of time for issues to come in (though they shouldn't at this stage). Betas will follow in all likeliness. https://www.drupal.org/node/467020