Ranch is suffering memory loss

[Carey Brown]

I'm a long time member of Code/Java Ranch. I use the old style layouts. Mostly visit various Java forums.

The problem is that the Ranch is forgetting the state of my browsing. If I set a topic to "watch", it remembers for a while and then forgets. I suspect, but can't prove, that if I re-edit a my post it will forget, but it seems to forget at other times as well. When I'm at a forum and "mark all topics read", it repaints the page showing the topics as being read. However, when I come back 10 minutes later they're all back as un-read.

I didn't use to have this problem. As a guess I'd say this crept in 6-9 months ago. It's very annoying.

[Tim Cooke]

Thanks for noticing Carey. You're not alone in your observations and some of the Mods are in the Back Bar discussing it over Beer and Whiskey.

[paul wheaton]

Carey,

This forum software tracked where people have been the same way many other forms did for a long time. It was done through a bizarre algorithm which I never understood that seem to be based entirely upon the last time a user visited the site.

Fortunately this site is about software engineering and the moderators are software engineers. Jeanne modified the software so that a person could activate a feature that would use a different algorithm for tracking where you have been. I activated it for my account. I think it is 20 times better than the original algorithm.

Jeanne warned that this new algorithm is pretty resource intensive. We should go easy on using it or it could overwhelm our server.

More recently, devaka developed the pie feature. I asked that the resource-intensive thread tracking feature be moved into the pie options.

Is it possible that you turn this feature on and enjoyed it and then the feature became available to pie users only?

[Carey Brown]

paul wheaton wrote:Carey,

This forum software tracked where people have been the same way many other forms did for a long time. It was done through a bizarre algorithm which I never understood that seem to be based entirely upon the last time a user visited the site.

Fortunately this site is about software engineering and the moderators are software engineers. Jeanne modified the software so that a person could activate a feature that would use a different algorithm for tracking where you have been. I activated it for my account. I think it is 20 times better than the original algorithm.

Jeanne warned that this new algorithm is pretty resource intensive. We should go easy on using it or it could overwhelm our server.

More recently, devaka developed the pie feature. I asked that the resource-intensive thread tracking feature be moved into the pie options.

Is it possible that you turn this feature on and enjoyed it and then the feature became available to pie users only?

I don't recall turning on the Pie feature. All of a sudden I ended up with a Pie that some else gave me. Could that have turned it on? I don't particularly want it.

[Tim Cooke]

You were given a piece of pie for a post in this thread, and you automatically got another piece of pie for having more than 10 cows.

Have a read of Paul's Programmer's Inner-circle Elite (PIE) Wiki page to see what it's all about. 1 slice of Pie stays good and fresh on your account for a Month, then it goes bad and gets removed. Your last piece of Pie expired on 6-April-16.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I gave you a slice of pie. Let's see if the problem goes away. Please post here as to whether things are improved for the next month.

I don't think it will as you don't have "Keep track of threads read on a thread by thread basis" on? Unless you used to and there was a bug introduced.

This feature doesn't affect "watching" threads anyway. It only affects the threads marked as read.