Unread Posts Marking

[PeteB]

Am I alone here in experiencing some oddness around the display of threads with unread posts?

If I come back here after a day's absense, I expect to see most of the forum's threads in bold with the

symbol.

Instead, it appears that I only get that visual notification for threads that have had new replies in the past few hours. Anything older than that is marked as being "read".

Is this by design or flaw, I wonder.

Currently, if I want to see unread posts in a thread I've not visited in a while, I'm stuck with having to go to the last page and painfully trace my way back to something that I recognize.

 

[WildCowboy]

There's a 15-minute inactivity threshold. Once you've been inactive for 15 minutes, you are considered "gone" by the vBulletin system and all threads are considered read. When you return again later, only threads with new posts since your last activity are shown in bold. That's standard vBulletin behavior.

 

[PeteB]

That's not the experience I have on the other vBulletin forum I frequent (http://photography-on-the.net/forum, which is the same size (posts/threads) as macrumors) which handles the "unread" flag appropriately (if I come back to the forum the next day, I see exactly what I've read and not read).

FYI, the notification settings are

Thread/Forum Read Marking Type: Database (no automatic forum marking)
Database Read Marking Limit: 10

Marking limit may be changed over time as the threadread table grows really big - e.g. currently it's 1.1 million rows.

More info at http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=640837

 

[WildCowboy]

Correct. MacRumors currently uses the "Inactivity/Cookie Based" system for the marking type, as this was the only option available until several years ago and is the one our users have become accustomed to. "Database" marking as used on POTN is also more resource-intensive, and MacRumors has always been pushing the limits of its server resources, so that may be another reason why this change has not been explored. We have had more room to spare since upgrading the servers a while ago though, so perhaps this is something we could revisit.

 

[PeteB]

Sounds good.

I do know that POTN works from pretty beefy hardware specs, so that would most probably explain why it can get away with it.

I didn't know about the resourcing issue associated with that setting.

Many thanks for the explaination, it would certainly be handy if MR worked the same way...

 

[mgguy]

We have had more room to spare since upgrading the servers a while ago though, so perhaps this is something we could revisit.

I think this would be a big improvement. A 15-minute inactive period isn't very much, as it is easy to get distracted doing something else. No inactive period at all would be ideal, as you would always know where you are at in your review of thread status.

 

[mgguy]

Huh--I just noticed something screwy in how unread posts are marked that for some reason I hadn't noticed before. I just logged into MR and went to the PRSI forum. The posts that I had not yet read were bolded as they should be. However, when I entered a thread and posted there, and then clicked on PRSI again, all of the posts that were bolded before were no longer bolded. In addition, when I then entered this feedback forum, none of the new posts I have not read were bolded. Why is that? I thought that each forum functioned separately, so that each one I entered would have new posts bolded. I have my favorite MR forums marked in a folder in the Menu Bar on my Mac and enter each one by going into that folder and clicking the one I want to look at. I don't know if that would make a difference and cause all forums to reset when I enter just one of them. Any help here would be appreciated.