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General discussion

Mark All as Read

Oct 26, 2007 10:31PM PDT

The Mark All as Read has never worked very well but it has sortof worked ... at least when the link appears.

This morning I see that there are new posts since my last visit to Speakeasy, but there is no 'Mark All as Read' link in the upper right where I'm used to seeing it.

When I first came over to the feedback forum this morning the link was also missing in both FF 1.5 and IE 6 even though there are a LOT of posts I've never seen before. Later the link did appear in 'Forum Feedback' but not in Speakeasy. A few minutes ago the link returned in Speakeasy even though there was no apparent new post since I first visited the forum a little while ago.

This sort of erratic behavior is not new but I don't see that anybody has commented on it. Maybe it's just another gremlin in the software.

BTW:
When I said that 'Mark all as read' does not work well, I'm still remembering our old software, pre-Jive. In that system, if I looked at the forum at (for example) 08:55 and later clicked the link to mark everything read, the software only marked posts created before 08:55. With the current software if I look at a forum at 08:55 and then click the 'mark all as read' at (for example) 09:00 the software marks all posts as read, including those made between 08:55 and 09:00. It isn't a huge big deal, but the behavior of the old software was more useful than the behavior of the 'new' software.
The other idiosyncrasy of the current software is that if I 'mark all as read' the resulting page uses a URL like: forums.cnet.com/7705 ... instead of a URL like forums.cnet.com/5204 .... to display the results. Consequently, if I 'mark all as read' at 08:55 and then return at 10:30 and refresh the page I will accidentally 'mark all as read' again. It's a bit annoying.
These annoying behaviors are not new. I believe I've reported them before. It would be nice if they could be fixed.

Discussion is locked

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"This sort of erratic behavior is not new but I don't see th
Oct 27, 2007 4:39AM PDT

"This sort of erratic behavior is not new but I don't see that anybody has commented on it. Maybe it's just another gremlin in the software."

First, it's been commented on many times.

Second, there is an issue where a post is edited and it will show as unread but the main top entry won't note it.

Sorry, but it's broken and there's no real reason to fix it.

Bob

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Edited posts
Oct 27, 2007 11:40AM PDT

I have also noticed red dots next to threads with nothing showing as unread when I display them. Usually finding the post with the latest time stamp and re-reading it clears the red dot. Now that you mention the editing, that explains one thing. But, who would be doing the editing and for what legitimate purpose? I thought it was delete or let it stand.

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RE: Edited posts...
Oct 27, 2007 3:28PM PDT

Only Lee has the power to edit posts, from the backend, and whenever he does (except his own) he adds the 'Edited by' stamp at the bottom along with an explanation. There is a long-standing forum glitch, though, where previously-read posts will appear with the red 'unread' icon, and the 'mark as read' link may not appear. Unfortunately that's a hold-over from the old forums, and while minimized it still lingers. I'm hoping several outstanding issues can be addressed when the engineers finish their current line of projects, but don't anticipate anything soon.

John

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What I think it is
Oct 27, 2007 7:17PM PDT

When the forum uses a back up copy, then we get these mysterious red dots and even though we marked them as read before, they reappear as red dots because of the backing up process.

I hope that made sense.

Forum backup = mysterious red dots(no mark as read)on page


Rick