For starters, Before I created a new thread on a question I would have been certain was asked before I ran a search going back 3 months on the keywords “read” and “unread” in the About This Message Board Forum. The search came back empty so here goes.
Everytime I sign on to the SDMB, posts and forums that I didn’t open or even go near are maked as being read when I know for a fact they haven’t been.
I assumed the only reason for this “mis-catagorizing” would be someone else signing on with my screen name. Like let’s say my nosy, “defective detective”, ex-wife. So I called her, asked her and she said nope. I believed her but changed my password just in case and deleted all cookies from my Windows folders.
Needless to say that didn’t work. Everytime I’m on the boards, I see unread posts and threads marked as read and I never (well once maybe a long time ago) use the mark all forums read button.
I realize this isn’t a life threatening situation, I’m just curious if it is a common occurance among other users of the board.
The board doesn’t keep a list of all threads you read. A colored envelope marks a thread as having new posts in it since your last visit. Your ‘lastvisit’ timestamp gets reset every time you come here and haven’t requested a page for some time. Then a new session starts.
The board assumes that something you didn’t read in your previous session is old to you, and labels it accordingly. For the current session it cheats a bit and keeps track of the threads you read by sending you a cookie for each one you open. I think they aren’t carried over into the next session or are deleted after some time or when you close your browser.
The name of the ‘mark all forums read’ button is misleading, all it does is manually reset the time of your last session.
Check one forum in one session, then a second forum in another session. Both forums will have their threads labeled as old up to the time of the second session, even if you didn’t look at the second forum in the first session. The board just assumes that you skipped the threads because you didn’t want to read them, and now they are old to you. It’s no perfect solution, but it’s one with little work for the server (and for the programmers of the message board software…)