"You last visited" resets when idle?

About This Message Board
1

I guess the title doesn’t make much sense, so let me explain what I mean…

BTW, this isn’t something particularly new, but I just finally decided to ask about it.

I generally peruse the boards 2 or 3 times a day, and really love the fact that I can easily go to the first unread post since my last visit. This works well UNTIL I spend more than a few minutes on a page, as in reading every single post carefully, or if I get a phone call or am otherwise distracted from the boards.

The next time I click to a new page (generally using the back button on IE 6), my “you last visited” time changes to what appears to be the previous time I clicked on a page. This now resets the markers for all other forums as if I had already read the posts through that time. Since I suck at explanations, here it is in pictures:

Visited the boards at 12:15PM; stayed on until let’s say 1PM, then revisted the boards again at 7PM. I was reading the boards and clicking away, and then at 7:25 I got a phone call and stopped reading the boards until 7:45. I was reading a post at the time. When I used the back button after I got off the phone, now the time last visited shows sometime after 7PM (25 after, 45 after, I honestly don’t know, this is an example and I writing this without visiting the boards so this doesn’t happen to me tonight!), and when I go to any other forum on this visit, nothing before that 7PM time will show as new, instead of either 12:15PM or 1PM, you pick.

Anyway, I can’t imagine I’m the only one this happens to, so I figured I’d put this out there to see how folks get around this.

OTOH, I could just be completely out of my mind. Then again, those two events may not be mutually exclusive anyway :slight_smile:

Thanks for listening!

PS --Would you believe this is what I’m using for my very first OP after all this time? :smiley:
PPS – Since the board keeps timing out on me, maybe this is a hint I shouldn’t post this at all… tough ;D

2

There’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re idle for a preset amount of time (I think it’s somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes), you get logged out. The next time you click a link or reload a page, your SDMB cookie logs you back in and your Last Visited time is reset, as well as viewed threads. The exact time is set by an administrator; users have no control over this.

3

OK, thanks much!! I really didn’t think it was only me, but I just wanted to make sure. Appreciate the quick answer :slight_smile:

4

It is annoying. I wish the vB people would do something about it. Having a separate cookie for each forum would alleviate the problem, as only that forum would get updated.

5

Or, if it’s an administrator setting, could the SDMB gods please increase it to something sensible (like a couple of hours)?!

6

It sucks. It’s annoyed me for a long time but I could never figure out a way to explain what I was complaining about.

Because of the time zone where I live, there are always a zillion new posts when I visit the board for the first time in a day. I could browse the board like a speed reader on crack and still not get to the end of the new posts before the board decides I’ve been reading for long enough and resets everything.

7

I agree - I think at least an hour between activity before resetting would be desirable.

8

Would a longer time-before logout annoy the hamsters? Would it help them? Or is it hamster-neutral?

9

As long as you load a page before the reset period has expired, you’ll remain logged in. It might be useful if someone would at least tell us what the reset time is (I’m looking at you, Tuba and Dex), though. I suppose I could find it by experimentation, but I’m not going to bother, since it would take an admin about 30 seconds to check the admin control panel.

10

I probably remain logged in; I’ve never checked. But it’s annoying to be reading an extra long thread only to return to the board and find all the other long, interesting threads have suddenly turned into ‘read’ when I’ve done no such thing. It’s impossible, when the threads are considered ‘read’ to go to the first new post so that slows down my reading even more.

11

The reason that this problem even exists is because of the inherent nature of the internet.

Once you have clicked on a page and it is loaded in your browser, there is no feedback to the SDMB to know whether you are still reading that page or have gone on to visit other sites, or even walked away from your computer.

The next time the SDMB knows you are still there is when you click on a new SDMB page.

12

There are ways around that, although as far as I know, none of them are implemented in vBulletin. One simple such solution would be a small bit of javascript which sends an “I’m here!” message to the server at some predetermined interval, as long as the browser has a SDMB page loaded.

13

I don’t think that can be it because it happens within threads. It doesn’t take that long to read 50 posts and clicking onto Page 2 (or whatever is next) should tell the SDMB that I’m still here but going back to the board in question after reading 160 new posts often shows the rest of the unread threads as ‘read’.

14

I didn’t really understand the rest of what you said.

I believe the time-out feature kicks in at the 15 minute mark. If you have not opened a new page within 15 minutes, the current session ends.

That means that you have an average of 18 seconds per post to read a full page of 50 posts. Any longer is at the expense of losing your current session.

18 seconds per post may work for a some MPSIMS or IMHO or General Questions pages, but it doesn’t really give me enough time to fully read, contemplate and digest a good Pit or Great Debates page.

On occasion, I will refresh a page if I really don’t want to lose a session. Got to imagine that this puts some extra strain on the poor rodents though.

In the spirit of fighting ignorance I ask - what are the pros and cons of extending the time out limit?

15

I believe the longer the time given before timeout kicks equals a larger bite of system resources. Such was how it was 'splained to me, but this was a long time ago.

Hang on. There’s a new server coming and we may revisit this situation . . . or it may change altogether. I cannot say more than this, can’t speculate or tell you anything outright except to say change is absolutely in the wind. (See annoucement above for information about testing the new server.)

16

Oh THAT’S what I’ve been smelling?! I thought it was the fresh scent of honeysuckle wafting up from the South… :stuck_out_tongue:

17

Excellent idea. I shall follow your example. Thanks.

18

Did anything ever happen about this? I just lost everything that had been posted since I visited last night. I

  1. tried to load the SDMB, which
  2. marked a visit, but
  3. the hamsters choked and couldn’t serve the page, and
  4. by the time it loaded I’d timed out and everything was marked read.

I remember that happening a fair bit before my hiatus as well. It makes the board all but unreadable.

19

"You last visited" resets when I die?

:eek:

How do it know?

20

I will be leaving a trail of blood. Assuming Embarq keeps my connection up for more than a minute or so at a time.