it's a pain tracking unread posts

[JoeP]

OK, having whinged about this behind the forum's back (at HH in fact), and a couple of times in the past on unrelated fora, it's time to grumble in public and see if anyone else has the same problems. Even better, has solutions.

It's a pain tracking which posts you've read. (Just as I said in the thread title.) Specifically, there are three parts:

when you've viewed a message, it's unreliable to get the forum list to show it as read
if you don't read all unread posts in a session, you have no way of saving that info for the future - this deters me from just popping into the forums if I don't have much time
(this has just happened to me) if you leave your session for a while (less than an hour, it seems), even with forum windows open, the stupid software treats your next click as a new session and - in line with pt 2 - treats everything unread from before as read


None of this is necessary but I suspect fixing it would go to the heart of the software. Fwiw, phpBB and vBulletin behave exactly the same in this regard. The prospero.com software, used by about.com boards, pcmag.com boards delphiforums.com and some other sites, is perfect at this. It obviously retains a "last read post" marker for every discussion on the board, for every user.

I don't think this should impose too much strain on the database behind the board software, and I'd like to know if the developers could do it. Already, this must happen within a "session" (defined fairly loosely as being active without too long a break - see the "you last visited at" indicator), since the forum list and forum home highlighted do (unreliably, see pt 1) get updated, but when the sw decides you're in a new "session", it starts from scratch again.

:fuming:

That's all for now. Sorry for any spit on your keyboards.

[livius drusus]

Now that's some quality spittle-flecked ranting, my friend. Needless to say, you are not alone in your frustration. It seem the vBulletin development team is working on a (semi) persistent read marking system for a future release, but they're not exactly keen on the ETA details.

You might be interested in the thread on the subject (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104491) at vb.com. It explains the problem quite well, I think. From vB developer Wayne Luke (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showpost.php?p=671531&postcount=16):

The alternative of having a database record for every user and every post would take up exponential amounts of storage. For example, a 3 field record of userid (int), postid (int), and date (datetime) would be 16 bytes plus overhead. Disregarding the overhead, the table for this forum (vbulletin.com) would be 448,143,700,160 bytes to store a completely persistent system. I would consider vBulletin.com to be a medium sized forum. This means most people with a couple thousand members and less than 100,000 posts would outgrow storage on most shared hosting. Larger forums would be almost impossible without 300-400 gigabytes of storage. One of our largest customers would need 41,420,897,166,320 bytes, if I am not mistaken that is 41 Terabytes, to simply store post marker information. Now, imagine having to do selects on databases that large. The larger forum would have 25,88,806,072,895 records just for this purpose alone.

Meanwhile, there's a basic mark forum read routine (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=67129) in pre-beta at vb.org which might interest you. It's not a huge step up, but assuming the hack doesn't turn out to be a piece of crap, we'd be more than willing to install it if you think it would help combat the forum browsing acid reflux.

[JoeP]

Well, I visited less than half an hour ago, read a few posts and got sidetracked; now everything shows as read (problem pt 3). I don't have time to follow up those threads atm, but thanks for them - I will do. I'm already thinking your developer's quoted figures can be improved on.

More froth and foam to follow!

[Scotty]

I just want unread posts after X time-frame to come up, that is about it.

When I do the "new posts", then do "new posts" again a minute later, all of them are gone from the previous "new posts" (or at least it has happened to me several times.).

So, it is just hard to find something new, and visually I have a problem with the graphics (lots of scrolling too) on the forums page.

Part of it is just not being familiar with the forum structure.

Plus, sometimes it shows posts I have already read as ones that I haven't.

I would just think a "Time last read" in a cookie for each thread on the "users" machine, the database should already contain the time of the last post in a thread. Let them take up all of the disk space with cookies, and only do it for a 24 hour period then delete the cookies for old threads (or a week). Problem solved. Who cares if you have 1000 cookies set on your machine? Big deal, they are small (or one cookie can contain multiple threads of information).
So people have to turn the cookies on for a site to work, whatever (or to just get that nifty feature, and they can set the time-frame they want to see new threads).

Anyway.

-Scott

[JoeP]

liv: I have started to browse the vb.com/org threads, but haven't got very far. I may throw in some more workable proposals once I understand the issues better.

Meanwhile, is this in your power: change the session timeout value? It looks like the sw has an inactivity timer (activity being page requests) that is 20-30 minutes only, after which all posts suddenly get regarded as read. If this timeout could be 2 hours or more, that would solve my frustration. The downside would be anyone who relies on letting the session timeout and posts being marked as read would have to click 'marked read' ...

[livius drusus]

I have no idea if that's in our power, JoeP, but if it is we'll definitely make it happen. I seriously doubt there are a phalanx of people relying on session timeouts for their read marks. Hopefully, they'll be okay using the mark forum read link.

I'll check with vm when he gets back online and see what we can do. Thank your for the tip.

[livius drusus]

I just want unread posts after X time-frame to come up, that is about it.

When I do the "new posts", then do "new posts" again a minute later, all of them are gone from the previous "new posts" (or at least it has happened to me several times.).

Do you think JoeP's extended session idea will help with this problem as well? It seems like it should, but I'm afraid I'm really quite ignant on these matters.

So, it is just hard to find something new, and visually I have a problem with the graphics (lots of scrolling too) on the forums page.

Wow. That's a shame, Scotty. I shortened the forum descriptions so they'd be no more than 2 lines in the fixed width style, but Josh told me I should remove them altogether cause the forum names should be self-explanatory. I'm not sure what I can do about the graphics that trouble you, but if I did remove the forum descriptions forum index would be shorter and would require less scrolling.

What do you think?

I would just think a "Time last read" in a cookie for each thread on the "users" machine, the database should already contain the time of the last post in a thread. Let them take up all of the disk space with cookies, and only do it for a 24 hour period then delete the cookies for old threads (or a week). Problem solved. Who cares if you have 1000 cookies set on your machine? Big deal, they are small (or one cookie can contain multiple threads of information).
So people have to turn the cookies on for a site to work, whatever (or to just get that nifty feature, and they can set the time-frame they want to see new threads).

Um. Is something we (i.e., Brian) can do, or is it a suggestion for the vB types? I'm sorry, Scotty; I know I'm not of much use on these issues, but I'll do whatever I can to make your FF experience not suck. :(

[Scotty]

Extending the time-out might help out.

Oh, it doesn't really suck. I just have a tendancy to like things really simple. So, I might try out the linear mode, or hybrid mode and see if I like that better.

You can never tell :)

No worries.

-Scott

[JoeP]

I'm fairly sure Scott's idea of cookies is one for the vb folk and not up to the board admins. In fact I saw some discussion of it on one of the vb forums.

Still hoping the session timeout is a setting that board admins can easily tweak.

Here's an idea that could help - but also would need programming: a feature to mark as *unread* all posts since a certain date&time. This would obviously stomp over any knowledge of which posts you really have read, but is the only way I can see of undoing the automatic "mark all posts read" action on a session timeout.

joe

[viscousmemories]

I've increased the session timeout to an hour for now, let me know if this improves your experience at all. For the record a downside to this is that Who's Online info comes from the session cookie, so now members will still appear on the Who's Online page for an hour after their last activity. According to vb.com a future version of the software is supposed to include a revamp of the session cookie system.

[Scotty]

What has worked for me so far, is just using the show threads "active last 24 hours".

That seems to cover most of what I am looking for.

-Scott

[JoeP]

I hesitated to admit it ... lest Brother Murphy visits the forum ... but this week (since Tuesday at least) I've managed to read all new posts and have them show up as read without my session timing out. At least as far as I can tell. So this seems OK. :yup:

Scotty, the problem with 'viewing all in last 24 hours' is it ignores all the ones I've just read. Usually I'd read about half and then get a session timeout. Which ones? Read them all again in case? Or give up? Neither very satisfactory.

[Scotty]

Scotty, the problem with 'viewing all in last 24 hours' is it ignores all the ones I've just read. Usually I'd read about half and then get a session timeout. Which ones? Read them all again in case? Or give up? Neither very satisfactory.

I just usually remember which ones I have read ( ;) ), plus it does for the most part show what I have read already and the session timeout helps with that.
Plus, I am not reading a lot of this forum yet. :D

-Scott

[livius drusus]

I gotta tell y'all.... I hate the one hour session timeout; it totally ruins Who's Online. I also don't think it's the reason this week's unread marks have been less evil, JoeP, because I'm pretty sure vm just changed it yesterday.

[JoeP]

vm, have you dropped the session timeout again? Yesterday and again today I've been timed out after about half an hour - last night because (probably) the net was very slow, and today because real life intervened.

Doesn't anybody else get as frustrated by this?

[pescifish]

Doesn't anybody else get as frustrated by this?
Sorry, nope, not anymore. I've come to understand and accept that vB sucks when it comes to thread markers. They don't work, period. Completely unreliable.

Don't let them break your heart, JoeP!

The thing I do on vB forums is try to remember what time it was that I last browsed and make sure I run through all the threads that I care to track. I.e., it's screwed.

[JoeP]

But that's giving in, pesci! That's not how the west was won!

[viscousmemories]

vm, have you dropped the session timeout again? Yesterday and again today I've been timed out after about half an hour - last night because (probably) the net was very slow, and today because real life intervened.

Doesn't anybody else get as frustrated by this?
Okay Joe, I confess. I'm very sorry but yes, I changed it back. I wasn't sure we knew with any certainty that your problem was solved by changing it and liv and I were both hating the disabled "Who's Online" list, so I reverted it. Now that our testing is a bit more conclusive (:P) I'll set it back.

[JoeP]

If I see an improvement in my unread-post-states holding up, I'll be sure to let you know frequently so you can remember that your onlineness frustration is balanced by some good.

They should have a different activity timer for onlineness vs session timeouts. How obvious is that? But I can't even post at vbulletin.org or vbulletin.com except in a pre-sales area; it doesn't look like unlicensed people get a very warm reception there.

[viscousmemories]

If I see an improvement in my unread-post-states holding up, I'll be sure to let you know frequently so you can remember that your onlineness frustration is balanced by some good.
Excellent. :)

They should have a different activity timer for onlineness vs session timeouts. How obvious is that? But I can't even post at vbulletin.org or vbulletin.com except in a pre-sales area; it doesn't look like unlicensed people get a very warm reception there.
Yeah, oddly they're not terribly warm to licensed people either. It's open source but not freeware, so you don't really get the same quality of people working on it. Most of the really good hackers completely suck at supporting their work or only do it for money. Not that there aren't some nice people and high quality hacks, it's just not like phpBB where everyone is in on it as a labor of love.

Hence I'd really like to learn how to hack it. That way I could make money and write free hacks as well. That's what Brian, the guy who wrote our custom hacks, does. Check out his site (http://www.vbadvanced.com). The vBadvanced Content Management and Portal System (CMPS) is one of the biggest and most popular hacks out there, and it's totally free. :)

[tamiO]

Hence I'd really like to learn how to hack it. That way I could make money and write free hacks as well.

Do people make money or do they charge?
:wink:

Since I charge 120 bucks an hour, my friends think I am filthy rich. :cool:

[viscousmemories]

Do people make money or do they charge? :wink:
Hehe. Well I think there are some actually making money. There's at least one I know of. :)

Since I charge 120 bucks an hour, my friends think I am filthy rich. :cool:
Whoa! Do you have like a mansion and a yacht? :eek:

[JoeP]

I just want to comment that the issues I ranted about in the OP are no longer issues at all! :cheerful:

[viscousmemories]

:woohoo:

[livius drusus]

:glare: