Finding those threads? I remember those, but as so much it might not be a definitve answer in those threads. Itch does not like to explain the inner workings and is opposed to search term optimisation and similar things.
So if you make a "devlog" with a "major update", just for the sake of it, without having new major content, it might not get approved. But that was the gist of it. Make a blog that is labelled a major update, and you might appear on recent again.
I would hope you can appear there without a blog post, since it would give a somewhat unfair advantage to people who blog a lot over the people that really update their content without making a buzz about it.
And if someone regularly deletes a page and re-creates it to appear in recent, itch staff might notice and might ban that account or remove publishing privileges or delist the author. That deletion-to-update thing should not be done for other reasons, but some people do it out of ignorance, and some really to try to game the system. https://itch.io/t/3693485/do-not-update-your-games-by-deleting-them-and-uploadin...