So I’ve clicked on the hamburger lines at the top of the page and added a few Categories to that section. Next to the category name is a count of unread posts. That count is unreliable.
I read a couple of topics here, leaving a couple for later. Read a topic on a different category. But now the unread count on NSHF has gone to zero. But there are absolutely some unread topics. If I click on the category name, I get to the full list of topics, some of which are grey, indicating that they have been read, and some are black, identifying an unread topic.
This is going to make it hard to know if there are unread topics on the categories I’m interested in. I may not notice them unless I specifically go to each category and check for unread topics myself.
It would appear that the unread count in the side bar is assuming that you read all of the topics the last time you visited. That is a terrible assumption.
Yeah @ptheland it seems like there are some caching issues that cause the unread and new post counts to be a little inconsistent at times but the platform seems to correct itself eventually. When you notice this if you try refreshing the entire page in your browser it seems to clear it up, at least for me. Welp I just tried that myself and it didn’t work - back to the drawing board.
I’ve tried the refresh multiple times. Didn’t work for me either. That’s why I posted.
As a follow up, here’s a screenshot of what I’m seeing. I happened to be on the METAR board for this. In the side bar you can see it saying 7 unread. And on the screen you can see 8 topics in black, indicating topics with unread posts. There are actually 3 or 4 more of those below that I couldn’t fit on the screen. Those are all before the blue pink? orange? rose? salmon? bar indicating where you were in your last visit - whatever last visit means.
More seriously, this looks like some mismatch between the description and what is actually happening. There are 3 topics in the list with circled numbers. Those appear to be the 3 “unread” topics. There are 2 topics with small blue dots. Those might be the “new” topics. And 1 with no dot or circle, which would be the missing one.
The question us in the unwashed masses have is “What is the difference here?” What is the difference between “new” and “unread” and not highlighted at all? There could be some usefulness here, but we have to have some understanding of what is going on to be able to use these differences to our benefit.
new topics are those created in the last 2 days that you have not opened yet to keep the list fresh and relevant. New topics show a small blue dot next to the topic title
unread topics are those that you have previously opened and read for at least 4 minutes, and that have new posts (replies) submitted to them.
Unread topics show a number in a blue circle indicating how many new posts are in the topic.
In my screen shot, then, it appears that the first post topic is too new to be new. So the database takes some time (perhaps measured in multiple seconds to a few minutes) to update and recalculate these counts.
