Disappearing Favorites from Recent Activities

August 7, 2014 2:16 PM

I've been following the Israel/Gaza post through the Recent Activity My Favorites tab. Today, that post stopped appearing there for me even though I still have the post listed as a favorite. I've tried un-favoriting and re-favoriting with no luck in getting the post to reappear in recent activity. I've tried logging out, clearing all cookies, and logging back in. Still no luck. How do I get this post back into the Recent Activity My Favorites tab?
posted by Arbac to Bugs at 2:16 PM (13 comments total)

That thread is just about to close in an hour or so and once a thread is no longer accepting comments it doesn't appear in Recent Activity. It looks like it was a timing problem in Recent Activity causing it to remove the thread a little early.

I fixed it up so it should be showing up for you now as long as the thread is active.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:21 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Great! It's back now and I'll know to expect it to disappear again when the thread closes.
posted by Arbac at 2:29 PM on August 7, 2014

once a thread is no longer accepting comments it doesn't appear in Recent Activity.

This is good information to know! I had been manually pruning my Recent Activity for years because I thought they would just stay in the queue forever.
posted by winna at 2:55 PM on August 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hm, it seems like this is maybe not perfect behavior, even without the hour-or-so mismatch?

If you use Recent Activity as your primary way of checking in on threads you've participated in, but only do so every few days, wouldn't you want to see the last couple days of thread activity there even though the thread might now be closed?
posted by nobody at 3:16 PM on August 7, 2014

I hear what you're saying nobody, but we're really into edge case territory with this thread. The vast majority of threads have no activity long before they close to new comments.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:19 PM on August 7, 2014

I hear you. Is it a question of server load, bothering to poll closed threads for recent comments? Definitely an edge case, but giving it, say, a week's reprieve to still show up in Recent Activity would pretty much solve it.
posted by nobody at 3:34 PM on August 7, 2014

pb: I hear what you're saying nobody,

Story of my life.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:13 AM on August 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

Yeah, given how much some of us rely on Recent Activity to participate, and how airheaded some of us are about exactly which threads we've been participating in recently, I think adding a week onto the thread closure date - maybe with a note on the Recent Activity page like "This thread is now closed" - before it disappears from Recent Activity is an idea very much worth considering.
posted by mediareport at 6:47 AM on August 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

ok, sure. I extended things a bit in Recent Activity.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:27 PM on August 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I didn't even ask for a pony, but I still got one! pb is the best!
posted by Arbac at 2:48 PM on August 8, 2014

Neat, thanks!
posted by nobody at 6:22 PM on August 8, 2014

Yeah, until I read this thread I didn't even know I wanted a pony! Now I have one! Thanks, pb; you're the ginchiest!

(Now what the fuck do you feed a pony?)
posted by mediareport at 8:20 PM on August 8, 2014

Of course there is Horse Chow.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:34 AM on August 9, 2014