Minor Glitch w/ Responsive Site.

I’ve noticed over the last 3-4 days:

On my Home Page, I will get a Notice (Red text) of a new public post in one or more of the games I am in.  But.  There are actually no new public posts in the game despite the Red text notification.

Some global setting has evidently been changed that causes the system to think that a new post has been made in a game when in fact it has not happened.

Don’t know if it’s triggered by GM logging on or if a flag is getting reset to indicate that a previously-read post has not been read.

When you go into the game that is flagged red for a new post, none of the threads in the game have the symbol indicating which thread has the new post. And this is confirmed by opening each thread and checking. So. The lack of a new post notice flag is correct IN the Game Menu, just flagged wrong on the Home page.

Just FYI.

Like I said - this has been happening randomly over just the past couple of days since I started trying out the Responsive site (and it’s never done that before in the old interface and doesn’t seem to be doing that when I am using the old interface).

The responsive site uses different cookies.  if you stay in the responsive site, your "new" notifications (red, blue, and purple) should be stable.  If you go back and forth, they will screw each other up.

Ah! THANKS! That makes sense - if it’s just a cookie issue.

I use browser in “Private” mode, which limits cookies. Never had an issue on the old platform, but happening off and on with the Responsive site.

Will try a different browser or login on the non-private browser with all cookies accepted. Thx!

I've been on the Responsive site for several days without going back tot he old site, and it's still happening to me. Several times today alone. All in the same game, but then, that's the only one that has multiple groups that only some are int...as far as I know, anyhow.

It might be a cookie issue, but it also might be that the GM is doing something behind the scenes.

I flagged it for attention a few years back, but no one could ever figure out what was making it happen at the time, but on responsive right now when GMs manipulate something with regards to characters (their Group Access, what Player controls them, that sort of thing) it's flagging games as having new messages.

I know that's still happening as recently as this past Tuesday (confirmed by a player mentioning it directly, after a few PCs' groups had been adjusted).

Yes!

The GM in the game that keeps flagging as having a new public post has been updating Character Sheets (to update XP) and adding info to the Game Wiki, and THAT DOES trigger a new public post notification - without having a corresponding flag to show where the change in the game has happened - and without there being a new post in any of the threads listed in the game menu.

So. The system is detecting *some* kind of update, which flags the game red, but then doesn’t have anywhere to put the flag inside the game menu.

I've seen it too but I assumed it has due to all the messing around I do in different browsers and sites.  I'll keep a closer eye on it and see if I can track down any issues.  I do recall correcting a blatantly incorrect calculation but nothing else, so theoretically it should have improved.

Responsive does share cookies with the normal site so shouldn't be due to sharing those.  Wiki doesn't update the game status at all so definitely not related to that.

It would appear to be something related to GM interaction (most likely). If not Wiki related, then updating Character Sheets seems to be the most likely culprit.

I’ve switched browser setting (private to public), so I’ll see if that has an impact.

Unfortunately, the GM has finished a flurry of updating Character Sheets for the moment (it’s only a periodic activity - a few days every 4/6 weeks when XP is updated) so I’m unlikely to see the issue with much frequency now, if that is the sole cause of falsely triggering the update/new post flag.

But since a few others on the site are seeing an similar issue, a pattern may develop. But, fwiw, it does seem to occur solely within the Responsive site and not in the old interface and not due to switching between the two.

In reply to JackDTodd (msg # 716):

Character sheets doesn't trigger anything either.  It's only messages/threads.

jase - had a look into unlikely triggers for new posts a while back, and was wondering if there's any way whereby an update to a post for a group that a user ISN'T in but which contains a private line to a group eg language that the user IS in could be the cause ?  Oh yes, it's a real long shot and undoubtedly barmy.  :>

Hmm, no.  We don't go that deep.

It used to be that if a message was posted (or bumped etc) then we'd update the game "lastpost" record and then just do a comparison for each user.  Which is why we used to have issues with people seeing posts for groups they're not a part of.  Very simple and easy but failed for groups.

Now we actually go too far, in a way.  Whenever a thread update is triggered (deleting a thread, moving a threat to another group, posting, deleting the last post, bumping... or even changing groups a character is a member of) we trigger an entire routine.

This routine loops through every thread and every character, figuring out which is the most recent thread for each player.  It then updates the "stickylist" (your list of games) with the most recent "lastpost" for each player.

It's overly thorough.  Theoretically I should just do it for the edited thread/characters/players but that was going to require too many tricky logical checks so I opted for a simple loop as that would be the most robust and error proof.

But speaking of, actually I did just notice one small issue that could cause a problem if.. let's see if I can get this right.. if you changed a character's group and the new groups had access to a more recent thread than the player had previously read and they were currently all caught up on posts.  Easy fix, the routine is right but it's working on the information pulled from the databases before a GM did group manipulation, so will need to fix that.

Not sure if that could possibly be the issue, seems pretty fringe but I won't complain if the fix is as simple as that.

Actually I was far cleverer than I remember and had already taken group adjustments into consideration.  Editing players/characters via the various GM screen were all taken into consideration and the group memberships were adjusted beforehand.  I've put a forced group revalidation into the entire routine, just in case there's some fringe scenario I haven't thought if (and also didn't prior).  Will continue to monitor.

If it makes any difference, the instance that I saw on Tuesday was a case of the GM giving Group 0 to two NPCs that had previously had no groups at all, so that one of the NPCs could send a PM to the other NPC. (Apparently you can no longer have characters that don't have Groups, which is good, but they were old NPCs. Also you can't send a PM to any character that the sending character doesn't have at least one Group in common with - WAI?)

Whether it was the Group access adjustment or the PM sending that triggered red for the game that day, I don't know. (PMs don't -seem- to ever trigger red in other games as far as I can tell, so I suspect it was the Group.) But one of the players asked the GM later that day 'Hey, are you doing something with <Game>, because it flagged red?' and several of the other players all logged in that day as well (the game's been on an extended break), but not all of them. So some of them seem to have also seen red, but I can't verify it.

So...

One of the other players and the GM and I just did some testing, manipulating Group access on NPCs (adding some unused Groups to them, removing them, trying with GMNPCs and player-controlled NPCs), to see what was flagging new message notifications. (This is all on Responsive)

...and I think I know at least part of what's triggering it.

Adjusting Groups is making games pop red with new message indicators for players that have REMOVED the game from their dashboard sticky list. The other player and I confirmed that the indicator would NOT pop if the game was still on our dash, but would pop (and force the game back up) if we removed it, from something as simple as the GM removing a single /unused/ Group access from a GM-controlled NPC.

Not sure if this is in anyway helpful or not, but it seems to be the difference in why/why not Group manipulation by the GM is triggering red. It's not actually triggering JUST the red, it's full-on repopulating the game to someone who's removed it.
This message was last edited by the user at 17:55, Sun 03 Dec 2023.

The red notices I’m getting are for an active game that is on my Home page. It flags red even though no new posts are posted on any thread in the game menu.

The same, only I'd say that there were no new posts on any thread that I had access to. I have two characters int hat game with slightly different access, but there are several threads that neither can access. Presumably one of the latter had the new posts.

@Jase

Would you like me to start a test game, that we can invite all of these guys to play in -  maybe set up a couple of extra GMs and as many groups and NPCs as we can.  Then we can run a proper testing schedule, and keep trying things until we break them.  Happy to be told what schedule to test to.

Update: in the same game I’ve been referring to, the game flagged red on the home page, but no threads showed up as having a new post.

After reviewing the threads, lo and behold! A brand new thread was created by the GM, but NO FLAG appeared next to it in the game menu! No player had posted to it yet - not sure any player had seen it. I added a new post to it, which should now trigger a flag for everyone else in the game…

In reply to SunRuanEr (msg # 721):

Any thread/character manipulation will push a game back onto the user's list.  That's always been the case and not new.  If a user doesn't want a game to reappear then they need to leave the game entirely otherwise it'll randomly pop back up and it will always have new messages when it does.


In reply to JackDTodd (msg # 722 and # 725):

Ah that's new information, thanks.


In reply to JohnB (msg # 724):

That's what beta is for, so by all means.. but I'm also locally messing with some things to see if I can figure it.  I have "fun" adding myself to games and wotnot.

Ok found fringe scenario that could trigger an indicator on the main menu but nothing inside the game.

• A thread, that the player does not have access to, exists in the game and is newer than the most recent thread the player can see.
• Player visits the game and catches up on all threads (either by reading them all or clicking "mark all as read").
• GM edits the thread and puts it in a group that the player does have access to.

Basically the system would know there's a new post for the player on the front screen because... well.. there is... but when you go into the game it would go "hang on, you've visited after this message was posted and caught up on everything so it's not new".

Now it won't care about when you last visited but what the newest message was when you last visited.  Subtle but important difference.  Have pushed out the update, see how you go.

*grin*  yep, I still remember the fun of that sort of testing  :)  I also know that 'too many cooks spoil the broth'   but that sometimes external input can be important.  But I wouldn't do it without asking, I have too much respect for the work you have done over the years.

---

To business then.  I'll set up a couple of testing games.  One for fiddling with, and another for reporting back.  While we are playing with flags, we need to reports in a different game, as 'report' posts in the test game will affect the flagging system.  It also allows us to tailor some of the tests better.

If you want to help with some structured testing of issues -  staring off with flag colour changes, join these games  :)

We can agree a program of test between us, and work through them in a 'clean' environment.


link to another game

link to another game
This message was lightly edited by the user at 16:35, Tue 05 Dec 2023.

Under the 'Cast' button in games, can we get 'Groups' added back so we can tell which PC in a game is in which group in that game?

Groups were removed from player view per earlier discussions (starting somewhere around msg #431 in this thread).  GMs can still see a player's groups either by hovering to get the expanded view OR en masse by navigating to GM Menu | Edit Groups.

Discussion around that should go to a new thread at this point in time as we near release - looking for things that might be causing errors so they can get resolved before the jump to hyperspace.  :>

We could do with some more  help with some structured testing of issues -  starting off with flag colour changes, join these games  :)

We can't do much with just two of us.


link to another game

link to another game

In reply to jase (msg # 726):

Good to know, thanks. The last time that was brought up a few years ago, no one mentioned it being WAI. Sorry for bringing it up again!