Next forum testing

In that case, you won't get any for anything, so can't you just ignore it?

I can, yes. In the same way I can ignore all the red notification dots on my phone apps (i.e. with extreme difficulty, to the point that I never do).

It's not crucial, just an annoyance that I have to (well, I don't have to, but most likely will) mark all as unread periodically.

Seriously not a big deal, especially since I appreciate the effort that goes into making even small dev changes...but just thought I'd ask.

Your concern is totally valid. It's just one of those things where one has to balance the risk/reward, because everything you change may potentially break something else. It also means having another check box in the profile, and I've seen some apps that let you customize everything that most people wouldn't, which overwhelms some users. And I say this as someone who sucks at UI design.

Honestly, I can live with it. In fact it kinda triggers the endorphins the way getting likes or hearts or whatnot on any social media platform does. I mean, it's a cool new way to keep tabs on my mission to take second place in the scoring game from the dude who never posts anything.

Removing the red background would tone it down and demand less attention. It’s really yelling “look at me! important stuff!” at the moment.

I've decided to commit to revising the PM stuff so it looks more like chat and less like email. It'll be real-time, but otherwise not really different. The question is, is it valuable to do chat with multiple people at the same time?

I rarely use PMs, but the option for group chat seems like it could be useful.

I've got a first stab at converting PM's into more of a typical chat arrangement. It's on the test site now. It's not super interesting unless you're talking to someone else online. Still need to get notification timing right and scrolling to the latest unread and that sort of thing.

The new build with the real-time PM'ing (i.e., "chat") is up here. Feel free to ping other people who appear to be online on the home page.

Also, there should be paging of the notifications and a max of 100 at any given time. The PM stuff is what I'm mostly interested in. There's a lot of weird logic around scrolling to the right message and having enough previous ones. All of the old PM's have been deleted because they just don't work the same. Have fun.

Small update deployed today to fix a PM bug no one likely saw. One scenario that I need to test is on reconnection for a PM to check for new messages. That feels rare, but it's also something I would have to check for notifications.

Caught a minor bug: Clicking on the "+1" counter to see who liked a post when count >1 (+2, etc), the system only reveals n-1 names. It is odd because it works with 0 and 1.

Example:

Jeff posts.

Walt, Vater, and RCMAC upvote.

Click on tan +3 upvote counter.

Only two of Walt, Vater, and RCMAC are listed.

Are you looking at the first post of this thread? There was a bug already resolved that was deleting votes, but the counts are calculated when someone votes or un-votes. If you like it, I suspect it will be correct because it will trigger a recalc.

I am feeling a bit confused, but I the bug does seem to correct after an upvote/downvote cycle.

1) Most of my confusion comes from your reference to the first post of the thread

Jeff:

Hi friends... y'all have been a great help over the last two decades in helping me figure out how to make the forum work best. As much as I want to sell it (and haven't), I mostly enjoy the fact that...

That post doesn't mention mention any related bugs, but your previous post gives enough context to explain the situation.

2) The bug does clear on a recalc invoked by an upvote/downvote combo.

3) I do think that a macro run on the backend to clean up the bug you mentioned by recalculating everything would be in order. My reasoning is involved in how I discovered the bug. I was on PBuzz and someone posted a picture of a trailered Dragon Wagon going down the highway. I was going to make a joke along the lines of "Vater is stealing coasters again" in reference to an old thread (https://coasterbuzz.com/Forums/Topic/stolen-carnival-coahttps://coa...oasterster), but suspected the original thread was here on CBuzz, which I verified by doing my research. Yadda, yadda, decided a cross site joke was too much of a reach, didn't do it. Now I fully suspect I am the only person to have viewed that thread in months. I found the bug there. Now no user is going to fix all the hundreds of dormant examples of the bug in all the dormant threads. But I can't imagine a one-off macro to force recalc (or clean up the database directly) would be hard to develop, and would clean up hundreds of examples of the bug.

If my Dragon Wagon joke almost made it to a site where I’ve made exactly one post 12 years ago, I call that a success.

As I'm finally about to do a release for the forum, I gave everyone who tested it 1,000 points which also triggered a new award on your profile. If I missed you, PM me, please.

For the curious, here's a list of all the stuff that changed. It's the most work I've done on it in years, and the most fun too.

Is the image upload feature broken? I uploaded an image in this post on Tuesday and noticed yesterday that it disappeared. I uploaded it again yesterday and it's gone today. Am I the only one not seeing it?

I see a small black square.

That might be a bug. I see you added it when you edited the post. Every image is flagged for deletion if it isn't included in the post, but edit may not unflag it. I'll check in a bit.

Dammit, I waited all that time to release and you found something a week later. 🤦

Oh yeah, you're right. I forgot I didn't add the image to the original post.