New Posts feature non functioning

[PolarBear]

CA, SF, Wine and BC boards show nothing new for the day. When I go to the individual boards (as if to create a new thread) I see all the new posts that should appear when I click on my links set up for the new posts for each. Que pasa?

[Cookbug]

The "New" post flag has all of a suddent stopped working. I have been watching the Italy board from some time and the flag was appearing, but over the past few days, it hasn't appeared.

Thanks for your help.

[linguafood]

Perhaps a related bug, but I'm having kinda the opposite problem: any thread I visit still shows up as new after I've visited or even posted. Reloading the page works occasionally, but not reliably.

What gives?

Example -- I post a reply on a thread. Go back to my profile. The thread indicates a new post. Mine. Duh. But same for the posts I've just opened and read. Is this connected to your maintenance scheduled for today?

[Engineering]

Just to clarify, when you say "go back to [your] profile", do you mean using your browser's back button? Or are you clicking your name at the top to load your profile page fresh?

[linguafood]

Browser's back button. Which hasn't resulted in this issue before.

[Engineering]

This is a separate known issue that comes and goes. My reply in this thread ( http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/8046... ) remains relevant. The short answer is that the behavior of the "Back" button is 100% controlled by your browser; why it sometimes refreshes the page (thereby updating the New flags) remains unknown.

[Dave MP]

I wanted to bring this topic up again, because I'm hoping to understand a bit more why people use this feature (i.e Unread posts).

I'm a very regular reader of the San Francisco board, so when I want to see what's new, I just look at the board itself (while logged in). That link is here: http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/1

I could also go into Unread Posts for San Francisco, which could be found here: http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/1/ne... However, I never feel the need to do this.

Basically, I don't really see what the difference is! I suppose that I do see two small differences:

1) In unread posts, things I already have read disappear completely (so if I've read everything, my screen will be blank

)

2) I have the ability to mark posts as 'read' even if I haven't read them

Other than these things, I'm wondering what's so great about Unread posts. Why do people use them?

There's also something counter-intuitive about this feature. If I read a post on the SF board via Unread posts, it will be marked as read on that page, but will still show up as new/unread on the main board. I would expect this feature to work differently....i.e. if I've read the post anywhere on the site, it would appear as read everywhere.

Thoughts on this stuff would be great, especially from those who say the site was so unusable without Unread Posts! Hoping to get a sense of what fellow hounds like about this feature. Thanks,

Dave MP

[meatme]

I use only Hot Posts ("unread posts") to read CH, quickly reviewing the handful of boards of interest to me and reading only the posts of interest. I rarely visit any of those boards directly, so I don't know whether posts marked as read in Hot Posts appear unread directly in those boards. if they do, that's a bug, so far as I'm concerned. The ability to dismiss (mark as read) in bulk posts that don't interest me is key, rather than having to open each one in order to remove the "read" flag.

A useful feature, to me, would be for the initial Hot Posts page to display not all new CH posts, but only those in the boards I've marked as Saved Boards. Intermingling threads from different boards might (or might not) be confusing after I've been away from CH for an extended period, but certaily not if I visit frequently enough for them to appear on just one or two pages. In any case, it would be a more interesting selection than the current unfiltered initial page.

[PolarBear]

Agree completely, would only add that the Hot Posts feature is invaluable for gleaning one's individual areas of interest on high traffic boards (SF and LA here on the left coast).

If I'm away for just a couple of days or so there can be a hundred or more posts to scan, and if short on time I can do a quick check of ones I've posted on just by clicking the My Activity button on my personal info page.

ETA: Another benefit is the Hot Posts/My Activity conjunctive use is that sometimes a post that I'm interested will fall through the cracks on the former causing me to miss it, an occasional check of the latter once a week or so will show up flagged as "New" so I don't miss out on any information.

[Dave MP]

Thanks for this feedback, meatme, PolarBear and Stephanie Wong......

Just wanted to clarify that I personally use the "My Activity" tab all the time. So, I don't have any questions about that area's usefulness. But the difference between "Unread posts" (fka Hot Posts) and the main board pages (which now have 'new' flags next to unread posts) seems to just be that in the former, you can mark posts as read even if you haven't read them....while in the latter, you must actually read them to make the flag go away. To me, this is not *that* huge a difference....but I don't mind ignoring unread posts that don't interest me. Let me know if there is anything else I'm missing though...

The fact that the posts flagged as "new" on the two pages don't match each other seems like a bug to me too....or at least, I wouldn't expect the site to behave that way. I can see advantages in the current system, but to an outside user (or a new user) I don't think they'd make sense.

As to meatme's second suggestion, this is something I have thought of as well. Not sure how easy this is, and it's probably not something that can happen anytime soon, but definitely an interesting idea.

Thanks!
Dave MP

[Stephanie Wong]

You definitely expressed my usage habits.

[huiray]

I use the "Unread Posts" for "All of Chowhound" very frequently. It's a way for me to see recent posts from any board that may pique my interest, especially boards that I infrequently or almost never visit otherwise. (Which was how I saw that 'Fried Chicken' thread on the SF board: http://www.chow.com/topics/856748)

I normally log onto CH directly onto my profile page which opens up with the list of "My Activity", then go to individual boards I normally visit AND/OR go to the "Following" tab in my profile; check my "Reading List"; then the "Unread Posts" for all of CH as described above.

[mudaba]

Yup, this fix went out in yesterday's release. Please let us know if you experience any further problems with it, and thank you.

Meredith

[Sarah]

Yes, thank you. Now it's page numbered? Why oldest posts first?

[Engineering]

The numbered pages are a replacement to the old broken "NEXT" and "PREV" links that used to be in that same spot.

As for the ordering, I assume it was newest-first originally? We had to partially rebuild the part that was broken, so if you notice anything else that's changed for the worse, please let us know.

[Sarah]

Before, it was newest first...

[Sarah]

Ahhh - thanks again!

[meatme]

Seems to be working for me today.

[shaebones]

Fixed. Thank you Engineering. :)

[LAWoman]

Still not working as of Tuesday 5:15 CDT.

Without this feature, I find myself not really having much motivation to visit CH. Funny, but I haven't missed it much.

[ChowFun_derek]

still not working on Wednesday.....I use a Mac if that localizes the problem....

[Markb]

It IS interesting how the lack of a feature dulls enthusiasm. Too much work-info ratio to wade through all posts to find newest. .

[meatme]

Still broken. Not good.

[Engineering]

Our first brush at investigating this issue has turned up a number of oddities with the Unread Posts page / feature.

As best we can tell, the reason that some of you aren't seeing any unread posts on that page is that the site thinks you've already marked them as read. This is obviously incorrect, but as best we can tell the circumstances that created this situation should not be a frequent occurrence. If this is correct, the problem should gradually fix itself for you over time.

In either case, we do have a pretty clear idea of how to prevent this from happening again, and hope to have a solution in place relatively soon. In the mean time, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.

[StriperGuy]

Still not working at all for the Boston board for me.

[Stephanie Wong]

So the site thinks I've marked the following boards as completely read: SF, CA, General Topics, Food Media, Wine, Not about Food, Chain, & Site Talk

This even though clicking on Unread Posts for All Chowhound shows unread posts?

[Stephanie Wong]

Any progress ?

[StriperGuy]

This is STILL broken...

[Jacquilynne]

Hey, folks, just a quick note. Our Engineering team doesn't generally work on weekends except in emergencies. They were working on this on Friday, and I'm sure they'll be back at work on it this morning, but they won't have made progress over the weekend. I know it's frustrating to be without features you rely on, but not everything is a same-day fix, unfortunately.

[StriperGuy]

Your engineering team is CLEARLY not paying a whole lot of attention to the issue.

[Engineering]

We are definitely aware of the issue, and based on what we've seen since Friday we have a clearer idea of what's happening and how to fix it. Unfortunately, even simple bugs can have a relatively long turnaround, and this particular problem is far from simple.

We hope to have the fix for this in place as soon as it can be completed. Until then, we apologize for the inconvenience; and as always, thank you for your patience.

[meatme]

Same problem here. The default page (new post for all of CH) shows posts, but the five individual boardsI check every day show no new posts, even though navigating to those boards directly shows posts with New flags.

[Engineering]

> "...even though navigating to those boards directly shows posts with New flags."

My apologies, but I think there may be some confusion with terminology on my end. To make sure we're on the same page, can you please provide links to where NEW is working and where it is not?

[Chris VR]

This is the feature we're talking about http://www.chow.com/new_posts

EDIT: I just looked at http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/12/n... and it seems to be working again. Thanks!

EDIT AGAIN: Ooooh not only is it working but you've fixed something that's been broken for YEARS, which didn't allow us to view unread posts past the current 49. niiiice!

[Engineering]

We haven't changed anything yet, which raises a large number of questions about the nature of this problem. I'll do some digging to see what might be going on.

[Chris VR]

Ah. Yes, now it's not working.

EDIT: I should say, it's not working consistently, because I'm getting different results when reloading various boards and the main URL http://www.chow.com/new_posts

Right now it's showing me 5 posts with timestamps from 20-22 minutes ago. A minute ago it showed me one post (I didn't note the timestamp.) Something is screwy, for sure.

[StriperGuy]

Unread posts is also not working on the Boston area board.

[ChowFun_derek]

As of today Monday March 19th new posts is STILL not working on the SFBA Board...I have tried it on 3 different browsers.....blank page of unread posts.

[Sarah]

I just tried the SFBA board and got only page 2 or posts 51-63 w/ no option for older posts. But if I go through Chowhound Discussions at top of page and click SFBA I get the full pages.

[meatme]

Open New Posts for, e.g., the Site Talk board: http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/30/new_posts

Result: "There are no new posts."

Navigate directly to the Site Talk board: http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/30

Result: Lots of posts with a New flag, and lots of old posts, too.

Repeat for Manhattan, Outer Boroughs, New York State boards: Same result.

Log out / log in and try again: Same result.

[meatme]

And a new problem too, at least for me. When I edited the above to correct a typo, all of the embedded carriage returns had disappeared, requiring that I reinsert them during editing.

[Engineering]

This seems to be an old bug that has resurfaced. To verify: on a board where no NEW flags are appearing, can you click into a thread (to mark it "read"), click back to the board, and refresh?

The old bug was that, if you had never read any of the 50 posts appearing on the current page of a board, the NEW flag would not appear for any of those posts. This is definitely happening again, but I'd like to verify that this is the only issue.

[meatme]

I do not believe that any of the boards I checked, including this one, had 50 unread posts.

[Stephanie Wong]

No UNread posts show up for me on SF, CA, Site Talk, General Topics, Food Media, Not about Food boards for me.

[Chris VR]

Not working for me either this morning.

[shaebones]

Yes, unread post function is broken. Site use unbearable w/o it. :(

[Sarah]

Similarly, I can't get first page of Unread Posts (#1-50) and SFBA... or maybe my problem's unrelated...

[Engineering]

Probably unrelated, but so long as you have my attention, does http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/1/ne... work ?

EDIT: made this comment based on an incorrect assumption. All of the "new posts" page issues are likely related.

[Stephanie Wong]

Having same problem for last couple nights; The above ink does NOT work for me either.

[Sarah]

No -- goes to blank page of Unread Posts for SFBA.

[StriperGuy]

Are you making any attempt to actually fix this?

[Glencora]

I'm having this problem, too.