Forum is messed up

Data1001

I sort the forum by "Recent Discussions" and select "Following" (to only show threads from the sub-forums I follow. I have had it set up this way since the beginning of this new forum software. I visit the forum daily. Today is the first time I've run into this issue: when clicking on a thread, then using the back button to return to the Recent Discussions page, what has always happened is that the thread I just opened is now marked as read. Now, today, it is not marked as read — however, if I refresh the page, it then becomes marked as read.

I've cleared site cookies, logged out and relogged in, cleared my browser cache, restarted it... even tried it in a different browser (main browser is Firefox, but also opened it in Chrome), and the problems remain.

Kind of annoying.

Dr. Creon (¥SA)

After reading your post I just checked and, sure enough, it's happening for me as well.

Also, I utilize "Recent Discussions" the same way you do.

Edit: Just noticed that the notification counter is behaving differently as well. Similar to the "new"/ "marked read" issue, before now if I clicked on my notifications at the bottom of the screen and read the post, using the back button would clear the notification counter. Now I need to refresh the "Recent Discussions" page in order for the notification counter to clear itself.

Gib - Admiral Mariners

I have to hit refresh to get the new on discussions go away, started about the time the event started.

DavideBooks

Yes, it is annoying. I don't like refreshing everytime. It used to refresh everytime I hit the back button.

Gib - Admiral Mariners

Yes it did, That is what changed when the event started.

Data1001

The forum is still misbehaving, btw. Refreshing the page often alternately shows all threads as read, then another refresh shows the unread threads — almost like a toggle, although it's not always reproducible. Something is seriously haywire.

Gib - Admiral Mariners

Yes it is. I hope they get it fixed soon.

FutureImperfecta

Even using the site like normal I had to deal with several.. "Brown outs" today. Couldn't access anything at all several times

Dirk Gunderson

I’ve noticed that when I read a topic and back out back to the forum page that the notification for new posts in that topic either takes a few seconds to update or just doesn’t do it at all. There have also been more than a few pages that just plain didn’t load, going only to a white screen and needing to be reloaded manually. It’s getting real old, real fast.

Data1001

Coming up on a month of these issues, with no solution in sight.

But now, a new fun thing is happening — at least, I'm only just noticing it today — occasionally new messages in a thread will be completely blank. (Refreshing the page seems to load them normally.)

DavideBooks

Data1001 wrote: »

Coming up on a month of these issues, with no solution in sight.

But now, a new fun thing is happening — at least, I'm only just noticing it today — occasionally new messages in a thread will be completely blank. (Refreshing the page seems to load them normally.)

I thought that was just my connection.

Proont

Data1001 wrote: »

Coming up on a month of these issues, with no solution in sight.

But now, a new fun thing is happening — at least, I'm only just noticing it today — occasionally new messages in a thread will be completely blank. (Refreshing the page seems to load them normally.)

Yeah, I saw that for the first time today. Fun Times.

Data1001

Thanks for the screenshot, Proont. Happened to me again just now (and yes, refreshing the page fixed it).




Edit: Geez, it wouldn't even let me post this message until I refreshed. 🙄

Dirk Gunderson

I thought this morning that things were running more smoothly (not as much delay from backing out of a topic and watching the New Posts notification going away) but I just saw the blank message thing myself.

DavideBooks

Just got this.

It is over multiple platforms, but seemingly random.

Data1001

Wowzers — I don't wanna jinx anything, but... as of today (Jan 16), this issue appears to have been solved. Yay for giving my F5 key a rest!

Data1001

Oh no. As noted above, this issue was fixed (or went away in an update or something) back in January, but now it's back.

To restate the problem:

1. Open one of the main STT sub-forums (or Recent Discussions, which I use)
2. Click on a thread with new unread posts
3. Hit your browser's back button to return to your previous page
4. That thread that you just visited still shows the same # of posts as being unread

Things I tried:

• refreshing the page (well, this is actually the only way to get that thread's unread post count to update, but it doesn't fix the larger issue, since the next thread you open does the same thing)
• restarting the browser
• deleting all browser cache and cookies, and re-signing in
• cursing (not terribly surprised this wasn't efficacious, but thought it was worth a shot)

As I believe I mentioned earlier, the way I read the forum is to load Recent Discussions and scroll to the lowest thread that still has unread posts, then work my way up, until they're all read. (I don't always actually read all those threads, but I at least open them — one of my organizational/compulsiveness traits.)

===================================

Okay, here's something different. The first time I noticed this, the issue was not browser-specific. But just now, I opened the forum in Chrome, and there isn't a problem there. So the browser this is happening to me now in is the latest Firefox (Firefox Quantum, v67.0b6, 64-bit). I did just have a Firefox update this morning, but I feel like it updates on an almost weekly basis.

I guess I could switch over to Chrome for a while for the forum, but I'll have to reinstall one of the add-ons there to change the site colors from the annoying default look.


EDIT:
Since I was thinking maybe some default browser settings were changed or added in a recent update, I fiddled around in Firefox's about:config and tried the following:

• changed browser.cache.disk.enable to false = didn't help
• changed browser.cache.check_doc_frequency to 1 (which checks for a new version every time a page is loaded) = didn't help

🙁

DavideBooks

I use recent discussions with my default Samsung browser. I, too, find having to constantly refresh very annoying. But I would rather deal with it than use the Google browser.