topic Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug? in Community Site Feedback

Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Alex — Sun, 03 May 2020 21:19:31 GMT

Silly question, but when I log in - say for example today. It says I have not read 5 posts. That's fine, but when I read one it clears the flag for all 5, and somehow, for some unknown reason I've managed to read the other 4. Doesn't just clear the unread flag for the post I have actually read and not the other ones.

It's right annoying and come back phpBB2 and SMF, all is forgiven.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

198kHz — Sun, 03 May 2020 23:55:28 GMT

There are various anomolies and quirks with Lithium, but your example is one of the best (worst?) -

on a par with submitting a post, only to then find that a previous reply makes yours irrelevant or look dumb.

To answer your thread title - highly unlikely!

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

jab1 — Mon, 04 May 2020 02:02:14 GMT

@Alex Lithium won't, but if you wait long enough, Khorus might.😃

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

dvorak — Mon, 04 May 2020 06:28:02 GMT

Get the same issue only way I know how to sort it is to mark all community posts as read.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Marksfish — Mon, 04 May 2020 08:30:18 GMT

I don't know if I have that problem or not as that is not how I read the forums. I view unread, scroll down the list and each one I want to read, I open in a new tab. Once I have trawled the forum, I mark all as read.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Alex — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:03:38 GMT

Thanks all for your help, it was the response I expected.

Test and QA must have taken some very long lunches when these forums were put onto the test platform.

I just have to accept some people feel asleep during that time and have to accept it. I suppose I could go ye olde fashion route of copying and pasting links into Notepad. Seems a bit silly in this day and age, but there you go.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Strat — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:13:04 GMT

I'm sick of having up to 4 'unread' topics stuck at the top of my unread list even though I've read them multiple times.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Alex — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:18:55 GMT

Intersting @Strat

I have the opposite problem to you - as in posts I haven't read are marked as read. Where posts you have read are not being marked?

I wonder if it is a mod vs. standard user permissions problem? Hmm...

I am probably barking up the wrong tree there.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

jab1 — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:20:03 GMT

@Strat Yes, I get that on the boards quite often - I just mark 'all posts read', but it's a faff having to manually clear them.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Strat — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:27:48 GMT

@Alex maybe we could trade posts

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Alex — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:42:02 GMT

Well I am happy to help where I can (including test platform) - just strange I seem to be getting different problems to what others are reporting.

Sorry I work in Computer Science - so that part of my brain is kicking in! 😊

Maybe my Mac Mini is playing up, so I'll try a different computer.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

MauriceC — Tue, 05 May 2020 09:55:52 GMT

@Strat wrote:

I'm sick of having up to 4 'unread' topics stuck at the top of my unread list even though I've read them multiple times.

Given up on this! The SU's have reported this at least twice - and had it "Fixed" - but it keeps returning.

I don't believe new versions of the software are QA'd on the Plusnet testbed these days

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Mook — Tue, 05 May 2020 10:05:28 GMT

Or it might mean that the 'fix' was applied on the Plusnet side and updates from Khorus overwrite them. If this is the case then does it mean that this issue is only applicable to the Plusnet distribution? If not then it looks like the 'fix' hasn't been committed to the release branch at Khorus HQ.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

MauriceC — Tue, 05 May 2020 10:11:02 GMT

@Mook wrote:

Or it might mean that the 'fix' was applied on the Plusnet side and updates from Khorus overwrite them.

The 'fixes' were during @jaread83 time in control of the forum and the Plusnet customization - so Khorus (Nee Lithium) initiated.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Mook — Tue, 05 May 2020 10:59:15 GMT

If you are saying that these fixes were made by @jaread83, does this not mean that these fixes haven't been applied upstream. If they had been then the issue wouldn't reappear after Khorus apply their updates.

This then leads to what I said earlier. If they've not been applied upstream then the implication is that it may only be Plusnet that has this issue. Or Khorus were never notified of it or they can't be bothered to apply them for fear of breaking the code base.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

jaread83 — Tue, 05 May 2020 11:00:44 GMT

While I was developing fixes around here it became apparent that I didn't have full control of everything in the codebase. I can manipulate the front end, create components that uses data from the API and do all sorts of other things like that (I won awards for this two years in a row).

The data from the API is something I have no access to in terms of changing how it's structured or stored. If I could do something about the API data, I would have done so a long time ago. I think the only thing I could do at the time was create the buttons to mark all posts in the forum/category as 'read' which will tell the API to do that.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

jaread83 — Tue, 05 May 2020 11:04:23 GMT

@Mook wrote:

Or Khorus were never notified of it or they can't be bothered to apply them for fear of breaking the code base.

I was in a constant contact with Lithium support about this two years ago. It was always 'we will restart the application, that should fix it'. But it never did so I would have to email them again and again and again ad nauseam. I am surprised that the issue is still lingering though.

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Mook — Tue, 05 May 2020 11:12:42 GMT

@jaread83 Odd how I'm not surprised at what you say above.

Is there anyone able to direct an email to these people on the off chance that they'll read it and act on it?

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Townman — Wed, 06 May 2020 10:11:20 GMT

Hi @Mook

AS @MauriceC has mentioned and @jaread83 has echoed, many issues have been raised to the product owners, but few of them have actually been fixed. We were told that they are the best in the forum industry ... well I would hate to be using anyone which is deemed worse!

Much of the good usability we see here has been crafted by Jack's creative use / customisation of the skin. In the SU group we used to joke at his 'cosmetic surgery' skills with the skin here lamenting that fact that he could not prove the bones or the flesh of the product. Without appearing to detract from anything that Jack did, for a customer to be an award winner for product enhancement year after year says much about the product owners.

As for the its still read issue, we chased this for months, it came and it went ... and returned again. The best angle I recall us getting on this is that it is a cache issue.

In comparison to the hash made of the edit post screen (so much of the functionality has been borked) problems with read status might be seen as a trivial irritation?

Re: Are Lithium ever going to fix the unread posts bug?

Mook — Wed, 06 May 2020 10:23:13 GMT

I noticed the Copyright too in fact I think I may have mentioned it at one point. But your comment about the Award is very true and you would have thought that when something is reported by an award winner they should take notice.

If they are saying this issue is down to caching then it implies that their load balancing isn't what it should be, but we've been here before with discussions about that very thing.