Forum "Who's Online" is broken

[#1]

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@NickBS wrote:

This is mine showing correctly. But will test with a bit of idle time. 

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@NickBS  It is not 'idle time' which is affecting the display - I have been checking for a while now, and without fail my AV has disappeared from the list one hour after I have had the forums 'open'.

As said previously, something has recently decided you are invisible within one hour of opening the forum page, whether you are active on it or not. The only constant one is that for 'Lithium SR' which I understand is something to do with the CRM? system - but even that changes from an 'admin' ID to 'staff' to 'no ID' on a seemingly random sequence.

[#2]

At 17:45 8/11/23

From a diagnostic point of view looking at the Who's Online is probably the wrong place

[#3]

@jab1 

Lithium SR is the "user agent" which facilitates "Social Responder" which is the technology stack used by the staff to harvest Forum, Facebook and X feeds into a single space.

[#4]

Thanks @Townman . Knew you had answered this previously, but obviously forgot your explanation. The 'tag' still changes randomly though, and it is the only constant 'resident' in the list.

[#5]

Two further examples of the total inconsistency:

Timestamps: 19.58.19 and 20.10.56

[#6]

It has been borked for some time.

I thought it may be linked to persistent cookies. But after playing around with everything I could I came to the conclusion it wasn't persistent cookies.

Dropping the IP level connection did/does, however clear the problem. IMO

[#7]

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@greygit1 wrote:

It has been borked for some time.

Dropping the IP level connection did/does, however clear the problem. IMO

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We know it has been borked for some time - what we want to know is why a functioning service has failed, if no changes have been made to the code - as has been claimed.

There should be no need to 'drop the IP level connection'.

[#8]

I doubt it is anything to do with dropping the IP level connection, but more to do with logging out / in clearing down the web service / application session state.

Such can be the consequence of a multi component web service - one but can behave as though you are logged in … whilst another bit thinks differently.

[#9]

@NickBS 

Hi Nick,

More interesting evidence which I hope will help the supplier to fix their systems.  If this were as claimed "interference" from Plusnet's customisation of the service, then one would expect that the "failure" thereby caused would be entirely consistent in character ... giving rise to no suspicion that this is in fact session / service instance related.

As end users we know very little about how this service is delivered, but it would be reasonable to assume that there is more than one instance of the service(s) which delivers this application.  I have several concurrent logins to the service: 2x laptops both with "keep logged in" set and the phone which has not.

I navigated both laptops to the who is online details page and was both surprised and NOT surprised to find that this system is internally confused...

Win 10Win 11

It can be seen that there are different reports for the idle times and inconsistency for reporting zero - actual zero and blank. These are labelled "Win 10" and "Win 11" for my convivence in identifying which machine.  They are both using MS Edge and inspecting the HTML shows that where something is blank, there is no data.

I suggest that this points very strongly to platform inconsistency ... which might go a long way to explaining why the supplier cannot reproduce the issue.  As suggested before, reproduction is the wrong diagnostic approach here - inspection of the failing service offers something to be looked for.

If there is some means by which I can determine which service instance I am connected to (via the debug console) I'm happy to find that information and report back.

If this is indeed indicative of code differences between service instances ... who know what other bear traps are lurking in this service ... and indeed why the change control processes allowed such to happen?

[#10]

Just to add, on returning to the (Win 11) laptop this morning, I refreshed the already logged in page, went to who is online and I was not shown.  In preparing to deliver diagnostics, I refreshed the page and was then shown to be online, giving yet more credence to left hands and right hands in the service having no idea what the other is doing.

[#11]

Ubuntu Firefox (119.0.1) at 11.44.23

[#12]

John,

I very much doubt that this is either client environment or browser related.  I suspect that it relates to the presumption that there is a single version of the code being presented to users.  Such would explain why the issue cannot be reproduced; it would not be reasonable to assume that the test environments (within which the attempts to reproduce this) are a fair facsimile of the production services.

I have more scars than I care to remember from test environments never being the same as production environments (to save costs) and therefore never being exposed to real world operational aberrations.

[#13]

Understand that, @Townman  - just thought it might be interesting.😉

[#14]

Even more interesting - I have just logged into the forums on my iPad, and as I suspected it would, it shows me in the online user list - BUT see the screenshot below, taken on my laptop - I'm now on the list!!!!

And no, I have not signed out on the laptop, merely refreshed.

[#15]

Apparently I am / am not online at the same time, is this possibly a Schrödinger's cat paradox requiring an understanding of complex quantum theory from the suppliers?