Mark Forum as Read - changing forums to be marked as Unread

This morning I noticed that every forum for me was marked as Unread.

When I enter a forum all threads appear to be read then when I exit the forum it is now marked as read.

After doing this with several forums and realizing that the threads were all mis-marked I tried going to the main forum page and clicking "mark as read" for all forums.

This then undid all the forums that were not showing new posts and marked them as unread again.

After doing some testing.

If I open a game forum that has subforums, hitting the Mark as Read will make the the Subforums all unread and the threads in the main forum marked as Read.

This seems to be the main "Bug" which would probably be why if I hit "Mark as Read" for all Forums on the site, it will mark each "Subforum" as Unread.

Uh oh. I made a fix to a previous bug in the marked unread code, but I wonder if it was hiding another issue. I'll go back over this.

Happening to me too

Yah, looks like I introduced a but that was missed on staging. I'm working on a fix.

hehe introduced a butt.

Thank you for all that you do for this community

There's a fix on staging. If folks can help test, I can get it on prod ASAP.

If I go into a game it works for all threads and subforums but if I do it from /forums it doesn't update all forums

If I go into those forums on Staging that claim to be unread (though they aren't) and then go into them and mark them as read, they stay marked as read.

Ok, there's a bunch of new code up to try to fix the reported issues.

Code has been pushed to prod. Hopefully this resolves the marked read/unread issues. Let me know if more are found.

I got a fresh batch of forums marked unread after that code was pushed to prod. Sorry.

To be clear, is that new actions are causing unwanted behavior, or the state of the data after the push is problematic? Because how new posts are calculated and the bug, things may look funky initially, but making a forum as read, visiting threads, or marking posts as unread should even out the state of the data.

For me, nearly every game forum and a handful of general ones got marked as unread after the update. Since they do become unread after ether visiting or marking them as unread, the code itself does seem to be working - just the initial state is off.

(Also, some games had unread status despite every thread in them displaying as read, but marking the forums as read did help.)

I see games I post to marked as unread, but when I go into the game the thread is marked as read. Clicking "Mark all as read" clears the game unread status

So you're saying when you make a post, the thread is showing up as unread? Even if you're the last post?

In the Games Forum, but not in the individual forum for each game. Yes.

Same.

Also mark forum as read is slow I believe. Thanks.

Likewise (I stand corrected about everything working as intended). Similarly only happens on the main forums, not game ones.

Hm... unfortunately, I'm out of town until Monday, but I'll see if I get a chance to do any coding work over this weekend. I can't seem to replicate this behavior myself (I can hit mark as read on any forum without any issue so far), so what I'll ask is if someone can get this to happen on staging consistently, let me know (if on a different user, what user) and tell me how you're doing it. I can use that to try to test the behavior on staging and see if I can't figure out why.

Just got a 500 error (persistent) when I tried to Mark Forum as Read in one of my game forums:

https://gamersplane.com/forums/12274/

Was able to reproduce (logged in to my account) on several browsers.

Posting in a game forum does make that game appear Unread. It was Marked as Read before, only I have posted, now it show as Unread.

I am not touching the Mark as Read button on any other games, I don't want to contaminate the data. I would hate to lose the record of what all I have read over all the games and forums I have looked at.

It is very slow. But I never used it before, so I can not comment on if this is new.

When anyone adds a post to a game, the game's forum lists as Unread, even after the post/thread has been read.

Ok, def sounds like it's something I can't test on my main account; I just tried to mark the forum Bullseyepsa mentioned and it worked fine. It's gotta be a permissions thing I missed.

I'll have limited time this weekend, but I'll do my best to work on a solution ASAP. I'm sorry everyone.

We can wait, its doesn't stop us from using the site. Enjoy the weekend.

I'll second what Nebula said. It's a mild annoyance; it doesn't impact usability of the site.

I am still seeing weird behavior with the "Read" flag.
I am still getting forums/games marked as unread when I add a post. I also seem to be getting random games/forums with the same issue that no one seems to have updated. When I follow the links from the top level the threads are either marked as read or those that are marked as unread, when clicked to take me to the "latest" unread will take me to posts I have already read. When I use the "Mark as Read" to clear this it reappears later and continues to take me to old posts that have been read when the read flag gets removed later on.

I got home late last night, and started working on this problem again today. I hope to have code on staging soon, and would appreciate help checking once it is up. I'm still trying to understand where the logic is falling apart.

It looks like threads appear to be tracked
Forums and games are not being updated or propagating flags and changes to flags properly

Can you recreate it?

This only happens to me on prod, not on staging (at present).

• Anyone making a post in a game causes that game to be marked as unread.

In the above screenshot you can see that I am the past person to post in this game, but it shows as unread, it was marked as read before this.

• Even just reading an old post in a game's subforum was marking that subforum as unread. (I can not recreate this now, and the Roleplay Archive subforum I was seeing this on is now showing as 'read', even though I have not touched it again.)

• The Mark as Read button is very slow on prod, it is fast on staging.

I did just get this to happen on staging.

Opening a link to a post in the middle of a thread marks the subforum as unread. Opening the thread from the head or tail does not seem to do that, nor does opening a specific page. But this is not definitive, as it does not happen every time, just twice since my post above, once on staging, once on staging. The thread in question also appears marked as unread after opening to a post in the middle.

On prod all my games (even retired ones) appear unread, on staging only the one I fiddled with appears that way. Earlier, I think staging was showing all as unread, but I can not promise that.

There is new logic on staging that I hope should resolve all the issues. This does not yet address the Mark as Read being slow. I'll be looking into that next. I suspect that's more easily resolved by proper indexing. Regardless, I'd appreciate people looking at behavior on staging and telling me if it looks resolved.

I have not been able to replicate the problem on staging since this fix. But then it was a sometimes hard to get to happen. Will try again in a while and others can test too.

It seems to be fixed on my end but no idea if it is fixed for everyone. For me it was only if I went to forums and didn't go any deeper, now it is marking all forums read as before

Does not seem to be working on my end; all Forums still show as having new messages, even after I enter and "clear" it.

Just checked out staging. I visited Test (the top thread on the front page), then returned to the front page and I see something strange. It is still marked as unread in the Game Tavern section, but it is marked as read in the Community posts section 🤔

I am see the same for that (Test) game.

Except now it is showing as read in both places. All I did was visit the other unread game in the Games Tavern (mothership) and the (Test) game became 'read'.

And, by 'game' I mean 'thread'.

I couldn't replicate that. I visited all the of the threads in the Games tavern section and they are all still unread for me.

Although, I had other unread threads in the whole Games Tavern forum. When I marked the whole Games Tavern as read, then the front page became read.

Then I tried marking the Test thread as unread and nothing changed. It stayed as read.

Weird, that's on the front page. But in the Games Tavern forum, it is in fact marked as read unread (edit:typo).

Current Front Page:


Games Tavern forum:

Ok, lets ignore the front page for a sec: do the forums seem to be working? I'll address the home page next.

I can't replicate the problem on staging so far. I'm also not having the issue with the main page described above, for some reason. (My tag of ":O" on (Test) seems very appropriate. :D)

I did experience one weird occurrence on staging: Games Tavern forum was marked as read for me, but it had an unread thread in it (some random one, I have no idea why this one was specifically unread when others weren't). Upon visiting the thread it did get marked as read correctly and nothing changed with the forum. It only happened once, so maybe just some weird lingering data

Edit: also, this thread here was marked read for me after posting, but after a while randomly became unread. Prod's being weird. :D

Ignoring the behavior on the front page, I think individual forums are working as expected for me, re: marking unread properly and then being marked read after I visit.

They are not for me. Everything shows unread, including forums that haven't been used in over six months.