Wierdness with Mefi

December 18, 2024 12:26 PM

Running windows 10 and Firefox. The past few days, Metafilter seems to be having trouble finishing loading when I "Open in new tab" on a link. And when it does stop, instead of the typical favicon, I'm getting a blue or gray "hourglass" favicon. Anyone else seeing this?
posted by Windopaene to Bugs at 12:26 PM (30 comments total)

Mod note: This just popped up in the queue, pushing through sooner rather than later to see if other members are having the same issue.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 12:27 PM on December 18

I just noticed this this morning. I'm usually viewing in Chrome, but I'm on a different machine this morning using Firefox and pages seem to have trouble finishing loading and, yes, I'm also getting a new, weird hourglass favicon.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 12:47 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

Not this problem but the font across all sites got tinier 2 days ago again.
posted by phunniemee at 12:51 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

I'm not seeing this either (also windows/firefox), but as of two or three months ago I noticed comment drafts were now getting wiped out after reloading a page. Figured something probably just changed on my end, but this week I saw that it works that way in Chrome now, too. (But I couldn't remember: maybe it always worked that way in Chrome, and it was just in Firefox that comment drafts were kept across page refreshes?)
posted by nobody at 1:23 PM on December 18

The hourglass favicon for me has been appearing on several sites, not just Mefi, also Win10 Firefox. That has always been a once weekly or so thing but last few days it has been a few times a day. Now in Edge on Win11, I've seen several errors that are just a white page that says "Server hangup" maybe 4 times in the past week. Most often going to the main page but once or twice on a subsite.
posted by soelo at 1:50 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

This mozilla support post about Firefox using that icon points to a setting for reduced motion.
posted by soelo at 1:52 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

For me the site is continually loading and I think it might be to do with Matomo/Piwik.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:57 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

I spotted this a few days ago. It was a failure to load https://piwik.mefi.us/matomo.js.
posted by figurant at 2:53 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

yes i first noticed this on Monday and it relating to piwik.mefi.us not loading. i didn't notice the favicon changing until yesterday although it may have been cuncurrent and i just didn't notice it til then.

i personally would call an excorcist but i'd make sure it's a polite one because ghosts, like spiders in your house, only want to be friends but they're just a little confused
posted by glonous keming at 3:02 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

please be kind to our many beloved ghost members, they are (maybe) not to blame.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 3:08 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

Interesting. Glad it is not just me. I seem to have those things turned off. Will keep investigating.
posted by Windopaene at 3:12 PM on December 18

I'm not seeing this either (also windows/firefox), but as of two or three months ago I noticed comment drafts were now getting wiped out after reloading a page.

Firefox but not on windows - I just checked on both linux and android and drafts survived reloading.

People having recent problems - what browser version? (On FF you can find it via Hamburger (= 3 horizontal line) menu -> Help -> About Firefox.)
posted by trig at 8:08 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

I'm up to date. 133.0.3
posted by Windopaene at 8:20 PM on December 18

Thanks for checking, trig. Maybe I'll eventually post to Ask about my thing.

For what it's worth, it looks like I'm a couple Firefox versions behind, at 131.0.3.

And I just discovered I can reproduce the forever-loading issue after all, if I turn off ublock origin for the site. (I'm not sure why, but the default/current ublock behavior seems to be to block piwik.mefi.us, which, as warriorqueen and figurant pointed out, must then be the source of the problem, since the problem goes away once blocked again.)
posted by nobody at 8:45 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

Not this problem but the font across all sites got tinier 2 days ago again.

I was wondering if I was just going crazy or my eyes were failing me as I get older - I had to go turn the font size up in my preferences. Glad to hear it's not just me seeing something that isn't there.
posted by Dysk at 10:09 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

Yes and Firefox took away my refresh button which completely breaks refreshing on pages that have 1000 comments. Pull to refresh, you have to go to the top of thr page and then it opens a new window to refresh? Taking forever and not landing in the right spot oh and not fully refreshing.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:45 AM on December 19

I'm on mobile with Firefox Night
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:55 AM on December 19

tiny frying pan, unrelated to any bugs, but you should be able to refresh by using overflow/three dots menu, without having to change your scroll position.
posted by sagc at 5:06 AM on December 19

Where is that? There's no refresh under the three dots.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:15 AM on December 19

I am also at 133.0.3 but I updated within the last week.
posted by soelo at 6:45 AM on December 19

sorry, tiny frying pan - looks like that forever-loading issue is stopping the "Stop" (X) button from turning into the refresh button in that menu as it does on other sites.
posted by sagc at 6:57 AM on December 19

Lol I have neither refresh or stop
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:03 AM on December 19

I'm on Windows with Firefox 133.0.3
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:08 AM on December 19 [1 favorite]

Chrome 131.0.6778.140 for me, still timing out this morning.
posted by figurant at 8:40 AM on December 19

I got that weird hourglass thing today, too! I'm also running Firefox 133.0.3 on an ancient ass MacBook.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:56 PM on December 19

It's still super broken. No part of the site finishes loading for me on mobile. Any update on this at all???
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:22 AM on December 20

Same here - still having loading issues. Brandon is there any possibility of having frimble look into this? It's not a favicon issue, it's a loading issue. ETA: I know it might not be given frimble is recovering from injury!
posted by warriorqueen at 6:45 AM on December 20

Mod note: Leaving a note in the mod slack for someone to look at.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:45 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

Mod note: temp fix applied by frimble as they recover from surgery.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:12 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

Working for me thank you frimble, above and beyond!
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:48 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]