# Hey! I think I actually figured something out on my own! **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [August 8, 2001, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408 "2001-08-08T03:41:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/1 "2001-08-08T03:41:50Z")
Lemme see if I have this straight: I step away from the SDMB for a few minutes to [sub]post somewhere else[/sub] and go to the main board list and it hasn’t updated on its own–the same most recent posts are there as the last time I looked although casual perusal of the individual boards shows that posts have been made. Does not always automatically refreshing that screen save horsepower better spent on giving everybody better performance where it counts? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/2 "2001-08-08T03:48:30Z")
Actually, stepping away to post at another location was your fatal error. We faithful, have no such problems. Eat dirt. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/3 "2001-08-08T03:50:47Z")
And, I didn’t understand the last part of your post. Did I drink too much or did you? ---
**Author:** ![MysterEcks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f475e1/32.png) [@MysterEcks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysterEcks)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/4 "2001-08-08T04:52:47Z")
And here we thought tying your shoes and waving bye-bye was gonna be it for you. Did you perhaps just hit “back” or “go” on your browser? If so, it would have just reloaded the screen, which would not be changed from the last time. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/5 "2001-08-08T05:18:02Z")
The main page does not automatically refresh. It never has. I’ve left the main page open and gone to a day’s worth of class, with it just sitting there open on my computer. Having it automatically refresh would be a waste of server use. It seems to refresh periodically when I navigate around, not that I really care. That, and it’s not really possible, AFAIK, for a site to tell your computer to update a page. The protocols that the web uses were not designed to allow the server to contact your computer on its own. ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/6 "2001-08-08T10:31:07Z")
waterj2, That doesn’t sound like what dropzone is talking about. I think dz means that when the page is manually reloaded, the index showing new messages isn’t rebuilt, and the same list of messages appear after the reload as before. I see this sometimes too. Never bothered me much. I can only guess that the index is only rebuilt once a minute or something, rather than on demand (and there must be kajillions of demands daily). ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/7 "2001-08-08T11:00:56Z")
I’m not a techy person, but I think the answer to the rebuild question is indeed that it takes one minute at least. See, the time stamps only give hours and minutes. That means the main index will detect only those. Of course, within an individual thread, responses within the same minute will be ordered in the way they were submitted. I’ve found that if I refresh the main page every ten minutes or so, the rebuild (along with “new posts” icons et cetera) works just fine. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/8 "2001-08-08T17:15:46Z")
> [@](#): > > That, and it’s not really possible, AFAIK, for a site to tell your computer to update a page. Sure it is. [AltaVista](http://www.altavista.com) does this, for starters. One way to do it is with a meta refresh tag, that tells the browser to load the page again after, say, five minutes. I’m sure there’s other ways, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-i-think-i-actually-figured-something-out-on-my-own/75408/9 "2001-08-08T21:44:18Z")
There are other sites that auto-refresh more agressively. The NYTimes does it. Drudge Report refreshes about once a minute, it’s really annoying. This is generally used as a method to push more banner ads at the user. It’s a really old technique, I first saw it at the Netscape FishCam, which autorefreshed every 30 seconds. Boy is that ancient history.