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.

I put the latest copy of prod onto staging as well as a bunch of new code that should address the read/unread issue as well as the home page showing different read/unread statuses than the forum pages. The home page may work a bit better as well, but that'll be incidental. I'll focus on the home page more once I get these issues resolved. Please take a look.

For me, site is now faster than it's ever been, by a considerable margin.

Home page loads after 2-3 seconds. Other links load almost instantly.

Staging forums are working as expected for me. Marked as read after visiting a thread and unread after marking as unread are both working. I ignored the front page for now. And it seems really fast too!

Prod seems considerably faster for me now too

Everything seems to be working on staging, even the home page.

There was still a strangeness with the Roleplay Archive sub-forum where the thread I read from the middle of, on prod, and had that thread (and therefore the sub-forum) appear unread, was still showing as unread. But it is still marked that way on prod, so that came with the data? Some data may be messed up, but this is why I stopped fiddling with the Mark as Read button on prod. :)

Simply reading the above thread immediately fixed it. All looks good. I have not been able to make anything break.

Everything is working fine for me, except one thing: when I open a read thread on a specific numbered page, it gets marked unread.
Edit: this only happens when I open the page from the forum view. If I change pages from the thread itself, it remains read.
Edit 2: also, it only happens with non-game forums.

It seems generally really inconsistent since I can get it to happen with some threads and can't with others, so might be just prod data messing with stuff?
Edit 3: I can't recreate it with a new thread, so probably the old data.

That is what I experienced. I never got it to work with page numbers, but only when opening a thread to a particular posts in the middle. The whole thread was then marked as unread. This happened in game subforums. This happened on both staging and prod, but I have not been able to do it again on staging.

Is it worth pushing her be code to prod and seeing if the bug continues?

It's likely just the data inconsistency, so probably yes? (And even if it remains, it's probably not a big enough issue to delay the update for.)

I pushed the code to prod

Read/unread on search is broken...

Forums showing new entries in Game Forum seems to be working, thank you.

Because of the update on read/unread posts, some folks are going to have broken threads until they mark forums as read. I can help by:
1) encouraging everyone to mark the root forum as read, and then marking threads they want to watch as unread
2) removing all thread read data, which would make all threads folks have previous gone to marked unread, which they can visit and mark read
3) remove all read data, giving everyone a clean slate to start from
Or mark everyone as read everywhere, but I don't feel like that's a viable option

Option 1 seems the best. Read/Unread is working for me in game forums on Prod too.

Seems it's only broken on search at the moment. But I'm also seeing something more funky going on, so I'm trying to assess that...

I'm seeing funky stuff happening to bookmarks. Two of my bookmarks disappeared on the main page - one to a public game I'm not in, another to a retired private game I am in. Both were visible a few days ago. D: (The bookmarks themselves still exist, according to Game Details for both games.)

Can you check if they're gone on staging as well, and link it to me? I probably screwed up a query.

Seems like progress, but not quite a fix.

Yeah, gone on staging too.
One (on staging)
Two (on staging)

Thanks, I'll look into that asap.

I think if we can control what's marked read that's better than a global solution that's bound to be problematic for some people and maybe not ideal for others.

One thing I've noticed is that threads aren't marked read on the front page just because I've read the last message, but it seems to catch up. The front page seems much faster so that might be an artifact of how it's indexing.

Ok. I tried to reset the base forum for one of my games by marking as read and I'm still getting the 500 error I got before (same forum: https://gamersplane.com/forums/process/read/12274/ ). After I did that, it appears that all of the threads are showing as unread even the ones that were showing before I tried it. I did not get the error on other game forums for games I am in.

edit: Just for additional data, I tried it on staging and got the same results. That one forum generates a 500 error but the rest work.

I tried this too, out of curiosity, and it gave me the same error. (I also don't see any threads or subforums in this forum, is it intended?)

There's forums there with threads in them and the game is Public so you should be able to see them. I don't know if the GM @Cheeseburger_Apocalypse sees anything different (or what happens if they mark as read).

Mine is back to normal now. Thanks, Keleth!

Fiddling with everyone's read status seems a very bad idea. There are hundreds of games on here, and having all our reading progress wiped away would be very disruptive.

The logic used seems to be inverted, somehow. All the thread I have read are marked as unread, but the threads I have not read are marked as read. Almost everything in Latest Posts is marked as unread, and I have read all of them, and everything in Latest Public Games Post is marked as read, and I have read none of them.

Marking things as read when we have not read them is possibly worse than marking them as unread when we have.

Something is flipped here.

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Reading threads in the Latest Posts does not mark them as read, but sometimes marks other threads as read.

• Are you caching the results of the home page and Latest page queries? It almost looks like they are updating in a delayed fashion, but there is still random stuff going on there, so it is not purely a cache invalidation issue.

There is one random thread among the new ones that is marked as read for some reason, it is the 'Hey all!' Introduction thread [link], which I had not looked at. It is (was) the only thread marked as read on that page:

Even though I am last to post to it, this thread was showing as unread in Latest Posts and the home page:

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It shows as read in the bug forum:

Same here. vagueGM post was showing as unread in the homepage and as read in the bug forum.

Edit: Now mine as well =)

There's no caching going on, and the logic uses the static values, so I'm really confused as to what's going on. I refreshed twice in a row on latest posts, and values changed. I'm going to have to deep dive again. Honestly, this is really throwing me for a loop. I can't tell what's working when if ever. I think it's limited to the search code, but I'm not 100%.

I think this is related to what vagueGM was describing above:
I've discovered a weird loop of read/unread. It happens both on prod and staging:

Starting at the Forums page

If I click "Mark Forums As Read" then all icons that are marked unread (orange icon) are turned off (grey icon), so all icons are grey.

If I go to the "Unread Posts" page, which at this point would usually be empty (because everything should be read), it is populated with all the same posts that are in "Latest Posts" page, but they are marked as read (grey icon).

If I click on the grey icon of a thread that has a single page, it takes me to the first post in that thread.

If I then return to the "Unread Posts" page, that thread is gone, but all threads in the same parent forum are now marked unread "orange". They are also marked "unread" in their forum and from the main forum page. So it is not restricted to the "Unread Posts" page, it propagates to the actual forum, but only as far as back as the "Latest Posts," which I think is a week.

If I click on the grey icon of a thread that has multiple pages, it also takes me to the first post in that thread.

If I return to the "Unread Posts" page, it is still there and now marked as unread "orange" (I think because only the first page is now marked as read), but similar to single page threads above, all threads in the same parent forum are now marked unread "orange."

If I visit the last page of each thread or visit the parent forum and click "Mark As Read" I can eventually clear all the unread threads, and "Unread Posts" is finally empty and everything on the site is grey icons again.

If I return to Forums page and click "Mark Forums as Read" then the cycle begins again ...

Note: the cycle is reset every time you perform that step, you don't need to clear everything from "Unread Posts" to begin the cycle again, it's just much more obvious.

This "latest posts reset" is one way to get threads that are marked unread even though you were the last person to post in them and you didn't click mark as unread.

Not sure if related, but I've noticed that I stopped getting unread markings on forums. I see several general forums which have new posts in them (genuinely new, not just old ones marked unread), but the forums are all grey (threads aren't though). :( Between this and the main page bug, it suddenly became much harder to keep an eye on new stuff. XD

Staging seems to be working better... but still not quite right.

Viewing every unread thread on the homepage did not mark any of them as Read, neither there nor in the Latest Posts thread. After a few minutes, though, all of them suddenly changed to being Read, all except two (ironically the Testing needed: Forum speedups on staging thread at the top, and the thread about IA halfway down the page:).

I viewed those two thread over an over again, from every page, using every mechanism (clicking the thread name, the box icon, the page icon, the arrow icon, opening random pages, random posts), to no avail.

Eventually using the Mark Forum As Read option cleared that.

There was also one Unread post in the Games Tavern; and the Bugs subforum was marked as Unread, but I could not find any unread threads in there (though I did not dig through all the pages). Mark Forum As Read fixed both of those.

This looks like an improvement, though the delayed update is concerning, and needing to hit Mark Forum As Read for those random stuck pages does not seem like a final solution if it keep happening.

I went to staging, checked the root forum as read and then tried to experiment.

Posting in my game has shown no strange behaviour whatsoever - it seems to update read/unread correctly on both forums and the main page.

For public ones, though...

Visiting the Testing needed: Forum speedups on staging thread from the main page opened it on the first page and then marked the thread unread on both the main page and the forums. Doing it again opened the thread on the second (and last) page and marked it read everywhere. Revisiting it again led to no weird behaviour, it remained read as intended.

Visiting [CLOSED] D&D5 Classic module conversion: N1 opened the thread on the first page and then caused three threads (this one and two other from the main page) all get marked unread on the main page. However, on the forums only this specific thread became unread, the other two didn't. Revisiting it opened the thread on the second page and didn't mark it as read. From then on, each revisit opened a new page. Upon opening the last one, all threads on the main page became read.

Visiting Interest Check: Mage 20 led to the exact effect as above with D&D, complete with the exact same three threads becoming unread on the main page.

However, Interest Check: Sentai & Sensibility (SWADE), the third of the threads which switch between read/unread as described above, doesn't cause similar problems. I believe that is because it only has one page, unlike the other two.

Finally, the last public thread on my main page, Hello - GM Looking to Play, causes no weird results whatsoever.

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From all this, I'm starting to think that this is exclusively multi-page threads which cause weirdness. At least for myself. (Although Sentai one flipping because of the other two is kinda weird.)