Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

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Mudpuppy
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Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by Mudpuppy »

I thought earlier tonight that a thread had disappeared from my "Your Posts" page because it was getting contentious and perhaps it had been placed under moderator review. But then I checked the forum index page and the thread was there.

Now I'm noticing two threads that appear on the forum index page, and I can see my posts in both of those threads, but neither one is showing up in my "Your Posts" page.

Is anyone else seeing this or is this just a weird quirk with my account?
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EngCapt1
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by EngCapt1 »

Mudpuppy wrote: Thu Jan 19, 2023 11:10 pm Is anyone else seeing this or is this just a weird quirk with my account?
Grabiner posted about something similar to this a few months ago: viewtopic.php?t=386178

It seems a few other posters have noticed it from time to time as well. It did it to me just a few days ago, but that post is now showing up in my "Your Posts" list.

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Mudpuppy
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by Mudpuppy »

Okay, now both threads are back in my "Your Posts" page, so either a weird quirk with my account or something changed in the last hour to bring them back, like a periodic process reindexing things.
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Mudpuppy
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by Mudpuppy »

In case it helps the site admins, for the first post I noticed that was missing, it was listed in my "Your Posts" (egosearch) page shortly after I posted, then disappeared when I refreshed the page about 15 minutes later, which is why I thought perhaps it had been moved to moderator review, since some other posters were getting a bit heated about the topic.

However, the second thread I noticed was missing last had activity 13 hours before I noticed it was missing. So that was not an issue of waiting a few minutes for the search process to catch up and index the threads. It was nearly 14 hours since the last post before that thread showed back up on my "Your Posts" page. So that might indicate that the search process is having some issues.
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LadyGeek
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by LadyGeek »

There's nothing wrong. It's a "feature" of the forum's built-in search engine. From my prior post: Subject: "Your posts" search missing new posts
LadyGeek wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 6:30 am
Marseille07 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 11:30 pm It's asynchronously updated and it appears sometimes there's a lag. Not a huge issue imo but could be annoying sometimes.
The forum software has several ways to configure the search. We're using a configuration that has a few minutes delay (asynchronous update). We made this change in March 2022 due to problems with the original configuration. See: Re: Forum software upgrade bug reports and change requests The prior configuration updated the search info immediately.

What's not apparent to readers is that the search feature is used for lots of things.
Alex Frakt wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 12:46 am Do this search instead (works for anyone who is logged into the site):

search.php?search_id=egosearch
In human readable format, it's the Your posts link which appears in the "Quick links" menu at the top of the page. The search engine is looking for your posts instead of something you type in the search box.
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Mudpuppy
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by Mudpuppy »

LadyGeek wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 6:50 am There's nothing wrong. It's a "feature" of the forum's built-in search engine. From my prior post: Subject: "Your posts" search missing new posts
My point is that the feature is perhaps broken if it takes over half a day to update the egosearch. I've never complained about 10-15 minutes for an update, but in this case one thread took almost 14 hours after the last post in it to appear in my "Your Posts" page. Also, the second thread was in the page and then disappeared with no post activity on it.

As a computer scientist, to me this seems abnormal. An asynchronous process should not taken over half a day to "catch up" with forum activity. It's even more bizarre that it would index a thread and then lose that index without any new thread activity.

The issue seemed to resolve between midnight and 1am Eastern time. If there is a crontab at that time which generates a task for the search index process, then perhaps that crontab task should be updated to fire off more frequently. Just some arm-chair system administration thoughts.
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LadyGeek
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by LadyGeek »

Your posts is working for me. The crontab is running every few minutes, which is why I suggested to wait that long.

If I didn't see updates after that time, I'd be looking to see what's wrong.
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livesoft
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by livesoft »

"crontab" sounds like Unix-speak. LOL!
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Marseille07
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by Marseille07 »

livesoft wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 3:05 pm "crontab" sounds like Unix-speak. LOL!
Crontab is extremely useful. I use it daily both personally and professionally.
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by Mudpuppy »

LadyGeek wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 2:56 pm Your posts is working for me. The crontab is running every few minutes, which is why I suggested to wait that long.

If I didn't see updates after that time, I'd be looking to see what's wrong.
Again, one thread took around 14 hours, not minutes, to show back up in my Your Posts list. It was there when I went to bed on Wednesday night. It was not present at all on my Your Posts page yesterday until after 9pm Pacific time, even though the last activity on the thread yesterday was around 7:30am Pacific time and it was showing on the appropriate forum index. It didn't show back up in my Your Posts page until sometime between 9pm and 10pm Pacific time (I was not at the computer during that time, so I don't know exactly when the issue resolved within that hour). The long-term disappearing thread was: viewtopic.php?t=332697

I wouldn't be complaining over 14 minutes, but 14 hours seems excessive and I know that the indexing process was having more widespread problems a few weeks back where it wasn't indexing anything at all. It seems like perhaps there is a more subtle issue where it drops random threads for hours to half-a-day at a time, but whether there is sufficient logging information to diagnose that issue is another matter.
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retireIn2020
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Re: Not all posts appearing on "Your Posts"

Post by retireIn2020 »

I've had this same issue on bogleheads, It's likely a PHP session issue vs crontab, log out and log back in to test it.
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