New Posts Icon

[PhoenixEnigma]

There may be an issue with the New Posts icon for forums (that is, the orange as opposed to blue icon, in prosilver). I seem to be seeing this icon even when there are not, in fact, any new posts. Noticed this with the Hardware forum - I've checked the first half dozen pages, and I use the "mark forum read" feature fairly often (certainly since the start of the year). Tried deleting cookies and forced refresh. Still a happy orange icon awaits. I can confirm this is not occuring with all forums - XKCD meetups and S/FI itself seem fine. Ideas?

Using IE 7 on XP with prosilver. Unable to try other browsers/OSs as I'm at work.

EDIT: Could there be a post awaiting mod approval?

[joshz]

I can't reproduce it.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

I had that happen before, I think after moving a forum from one server to another. I never figured out what caused it, and somehow it eventually went away. But it's definitely at least something that can happen.

[PhoenixEnigma]

Everything seems to be fine from my home PC. Different OS, different browser, couple hours later, no way of knowing what the cause is/was. I'll chalk it up to something self correcting and beyond my control.

[Zohar]

Happens to me at home as well (Win7) and I think at work (XP) but I'm not sure (both use Firefox). It happened with General (with no new posts in LSR or Member Interviews) and a few other subfora as well. Once I "mark all as read" (even though no new posts appear to exist), it fixes it, until it happens again.

[RoadieRich]

Same problem on OS X and Chrome - I've only specifically noticed it in Coding, however. It's the only one I read completely without using the "Mark posts as read" button.

[phlip]

EDIT: Could there be a post awaiting mod approval?

It doesn't seem to be that... I just tried it, and even with a post awaiting approval, it still looks like there's no unread messages in the forum... no phantom unread messages.

But that said, I haven't seen this actually happen, so I can't look into it that hard... I rarely go to the board index, so even if it did happen, I probably wouldn't see it.

[Jesse]

Possibly it's a user having posted and then deleted their post? The same as when you get a PM that they delete.

[Talith]

I've had the same thing several times. It's not a huge deal just hitting the "mark all as read" button. Maybe it's when someone edits a post on a post you've already had marked as read?

[Zohar]

From time to time (a few times a day but not every single time), my last read forum will be marked as "new posts available" on the board index. Then I go in and discover to my disappointment that all the posts have been read already. This doesn't seem to disappear until there's another new post which I read, or until I click "mark forum as read".

It's not a huge issue, and I'm fairly used to it by now, but I thought it's worth mentioning. It doesn't seem to be related to cookies, at least I don't think so - I've tried cleaning them a few times. I also tried a ctrl+F5 to completely reload the page. It happens at work or at home, in both places I use Firefox, but at work I have XP and home I have Win7. I use forums.xkcd.com.

[Zohar]

OK, this is new - it now says there's a new post in this forum, by Azrael, from 15:10 (about ten minutes ago). When I come in, I see no new posts at all...

[SecondTalon]

OK, this is new - it now says there's a new post in this forum, by Azrael, from 15:10 (about ten minutes ago). When I come in, I see no new posts at all...

Your post was at 9:19am on Dec 28th by my time. Az posted here at 9:10am on Dec 28th by my time.

I can only conclude that, rather than reloading the page from the server, your browser is loading the page from it's history. Try a hard refresh and see if that fixes it. (Windows machines it's usually CTRL+ F5, Macs being Apple + R or Cmd + R, and Linux just being F5.)

[Zohar]

I tried a hard refresh, several times. When I try the link you gave me, it says the topic doesn't exist. Maybe if someone makes a post and deletes it, the fora software thinks it's still there? And obviously I can't read it it... I doubt people write posts, submit and then delete them quite enough for me to notice that so often.

In any case, it's not a very big problem, I just wondered if there's an easy solution.

[joshz]

FWIW, I'm getting the same behavior as Zohar-the link ST gave says the topic was deleted, but S/FI indicates that there's an unread topic.

[SecondTalon]

Ah, crap, I see the problem. The poster soft-deleted the post long before Az responded to it. So yeah, you can't see it. I just want to confirm with you guys that right now, you mark Site&Forum Issues as read, yet it still shows that there are unread posts on the main page.

[Zohar]

No, right now it's OK. Whenever I have this problem, if I click "mark this forum as read" it fixes it. Until it appears again, anyway.

Hey, could it be related to new posts by newbies? If a post is not approved yet, it won't appear, but we'll get an unread sub-forum icon? Just a guess.

[SecondTalon]

I would assume it works that way as well, yes.

[Azrael]

Ah, crap, I see the problem. The poster soft-deleted the post long before Az responded to it. So yeah, you can't see it. I just want to confirm with you guys that right now, you mark Site&Forum Issues as read, yet it still shows that there are unread posts on the main page.

This is why I hate soft-delete.

And monitors with dodgy color balance.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

I think this is a phpBB thing, not necessarily related to any add-ons. I say this mainly because I've seen it in vanilla phpBB installations.

Edit: It's also happening right now for me in this forum.

[pseudoidiot]

I'm pretty sure I've seen this behavior since before the soft-delete function was added. I'm not entirely sure, though.

[jestingrabbit]

I'm pretty sure I've seen this behavior since before the soft-delete function was added. I'm not entirely sure, though.

Yeah, its been happening for me for a while too, and I think there's another thread in here about it, but I can't find it.

[Robert'); DROP TABLE *;]

Whenever I look at the Fictional Science forum from the main Science forum, it tells me there are unread posts. But when I actually open the thread index, all the threads are marked as read. Anyone have any idea why this happens?

[Dopefish]

I see I'm not the only one who's had this issue.

My theory has generally been it being related to editted posts, and I feel like in the past re-viewing most of the first page [presumably seeing something editted somewhere] would fix things, but it's been particularly common lately, without only the 'mark all posts as read' button making it work normally again (efforts to find an editted post haven't fixed things).

[lurzanmazin]

I think that's why we shall ignore IE and move to firefox.