First unread post feature not up to date.

babyshoes

Not sure if it's just me, but the 'go to first unread post' option does not seem to be up to date - it seems to lag behind by a few hours and stops working when the newest post is more than a day or so old.

I can kind of understand the reasons for not showing up on 'old' posts, but it gets a bit annoying if I've been away from the internet for a day or two and can't easily find my place in regular threads.

What's far more annoying is that it's not kept current if there are a lot of posts in a popular thread and I want to check for updates frequently.

Is this a bug or a feature? Does MSE perhaps just not have the processing power to keep it properly up to date? Or is it designed that way for some other technical reason?

TIA for any answers.

Mozette

Yeah I've noticed this too.
It seems to me that each day it's updated, but even if I've gone out of the internet, I still get the same 'new' post that I got the last time - like it only updates daily.

Helen2k8

Has never worked for me either

Former_MSE_Ian

Hi all,

I'm sorry to hear this feature is not working accurately for you.

Our forums software relies on cookies as a quick ready reckoner to give it a rough idea which posts you've seen. For some users it works. For others it doesn't work as well. Unfortunately we have to do it this way for performance reasons.

To try and accurately track which posts have been seen by which users on a site this big and this busy would put a strain on our servers and slow down the site for all users. Our users expect a nice quick service. So that's a bit of a non starter I'm afraid. I appreciate it's annoying. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

Ian