Since yesterday, when arriving at Sanityille, I have had a notice that there was one unread post for m. Clicking on that link in the notice, I arrive at a page with no unread posts.
Just FYI.
I’ve never run into this on our site, but it’s a pet peeve of mine in another piece of software I use. So I’m sorry about that. I don’t have any suggestion but wait for the next update and hope that fixes it.
No peeve with me, Joseph! Just thought you’d like to know of sorts of buggy-ness when it crops up.
Are you using multiple devices to access the site (phone and laptop for instance)?
For the past week, when I arrive at Sanityville and see the various updates offered to me, one of them consistently has been to the Dickens thread. When I click on the link designated as a digit inside a colored circle, I’m taken to this:
It is always this - my own post from a couple of weeks ago, including the input field for editing what I had previously written.
I then click on the blue “Save edit” link, and it all goes away.
Some hours later, when I return to Sanityville, I’m told there is an update to the Dickens thread. Often, it’s just ONE message (supposedly) which has been added. BUT when I click on the link that is supposed to take me to the new addition to the thread, I get what is shown in the sccreen shot above.
A puzzlement!
I combined the two since they seem related. This one is even more odd than the other one. I’d try to troubleshoot it with the app developers, but the first thing they would say is to update to the latest version. I suspect that will fix it, and it will happen at some point, but we are not in control of when.
If anybody else is seeing similar problems, please drop a note here.
Ashamed to acknowledge my dummy-ness, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. 
Latest version of what? I didn’t even know I installed a version of anything. I access Sanityville via a URL in the Firefox browser (latest version of that) on my desktop computer.
Nope. I access Sanityville via a URL in the latest version of Firefox. I do not use a tablet or phone because I have vision impairments for which the only workaround is magnification (running my current browser at 150 percent on a 27-inch monitor) and other browser settings to make the font san serif and 16 points.
I do frequently use a VPN, and I notice on other websites that if they are using cookies to manage things during my visit, sometimes this produces wonky or ineffective results. Might that be happening here?
You didn’t install anything. We are running the software on a web server that sends the pages to your browser. We just aren’t running the latest version yet.
Possibly, but I don’t think so.
@Fr_Bill
I don’t think so either, but it is pretty clear that the session persistence doesn’t work for you. It can be either (1) the server or (2) your browser, or (3) some other browser.
(3) has been ruled out by you and the “edit” bug you also see would make it a little bit more unlikely.
(1) is something that admins like @jtbayly could fix. But since only you have been experiencing it, this is unlikely too.
That leaves us with (2). You use the latest firefox which is good. Keep updating.
A You said you are using a VPN Is this something in the browser called “VPN” or do you use a VPN in the traditional sense like “IPsec”, “L2TP”, “PPTP” or “OpenVPN” ?
B. Do you use any Firefox add-ons/plugins, esp for privacy?
Can’t believe I didn’t think of this. Definitely the first thing you should always check if a site is misbehaving. No matter how odd or seemingly unrelated to privacy the issue is.
Privacy in the browser is basically the quest for not allowing to build up state, so the site can’t identify the user again. So the plugin could reset the cookie to a previous value, which could explain the things @Fr_Bill is seeing like editing a comment and the “new topic” notification.
I’m switching to FF too to see if I can see the problems.
Ok, I thought about what you said here. Is it possible that you have many tabs open in Firefox?
When you use the phrase “Arriving at Sanity” could it be that you open a new tab and type in “san” which auto-completes to “sanityville.warhornmedia.com” and sometimes (1) the browser offers to switch to an already open Sanityville tab, other times it will just open the site (2) in this new tab.
In case (1) you see the notification but it is stale, since you have read all the topics in another tab already.
In case (2) you see the site like it is “right now”, without the blue bar notification but the changed topics in balck (instead of gray). Sometimes you close the Sanityville tab, sometimes you don’t, esp if you leave the computer after reading things in other tabs.
That’s all very normal 
I think Firefox can group tabs, so you see easily if other sanityville tabs are open.
Yes, this is normal for how I use Firefox. Or any browser I’m using for ordinary work-day use. I have a couple of tabs open to two different Google email sites (ordinary gmail, and Google Suites, both tabs grouped and minimized), then another group of tabs open simultaneously as I read news, for example. I’ll go to an aggregator, open a tab for every news article I want to read, and when I have a dozen or so open tabs, I’ll pour my coffee and begin to drink it while I read through the tabs.
Somewhere in here - from day to day - I’ll click on a bookmark for Sanityville in my Bookmarks bar.
The deja-vu thang happens (when it happens; it’s not happened in the past 36 hours) I’ve guessed that I’m seeing a page I’ve seen before. In other words, its a page that existed in the past, and is now reappearing.
When I’ve seen it, I click the “Save edit” button, and go on my way - closing the tab in which Sanityville was being viewed. Coming back to Sanityville later the same day - no problem. Until the next day, there it is again!
Except it didn’t happen this morning when I “arrived here.”
It’s not a bother, of course. I have no complaints! I’m reporting this 'cause I do not know how/why/what it might matter to youse guys who tinker on the back end of all this stuff.
Thanks for the explanation, I was just interested to see what the real problem was, since Discourse (the software of Sanityville) is done very well.