"All Updates" tab only showing one recent update

Bug Reports
1

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Firefox portable v. 98.0 - no add-ons, default settings

Screenshots of what you are seeing: https://i.imgur.com/4RRPFwJ.jpg

Description of problem: If I open my “Dashboard” from my drop-down menu, or if I switch to the “All Updates” tab, I get one update, and a button for “More”, but clicking “More” only reloads the page without showing the rest of my feed.

Step 1: log in to iNat on the web

Step 2: navigate to the “All Updates” tab

Step 3: only one recent update is visible

Step 4: click on “More”

Step 5: the page reloads but no more updates appear

Expected behavior: I assume that my feed should contain all of my updates. The drop-down only shows a limited number of updates, and the option at the bottom of the drop-down simply brings you to the “All Updates” tab - where only one update is visible, despite there being additional updates I have not seen, as is indicated by my email notifications. I expect for all updates to load in that tab, perpetually, and not be cleared or removed after viewing or reloading.

This could be user error. I’m a new user of the site and it’s possible I am missing something in the settings that affects this behavior, but I can’t find such a setting.

ALSO - (Edit - there is also no indication that there will be the option to edit your post before submitting it!) Right here in this entry form for a new topic in the forums, the “Welcome” screen to the right obscures the preview, and there is no indication that there even is a preview - users should not have to just click around randomly to discover that closing a window reveals the preview function. The preview should be automatically visible and available, or there should be a “Preview” button in the post area. There’s no reason for this to be a hidden function requiring user “spelunking”.

Also, also: I can’t add additional post tags that do not already exist, and discovering which tags do exist is not intuitive at all. This isn’t very precise, and it seems like it’s not very useful the way it is. Tagging this with just “web” is really not helpful at all. (Oh. I can type in the letters of the alphabet one-by-one and see a list of 5 tags that sort of have something to do with that letter. Cool, I guess?)

2

It’s because last update is someone uploading many photos, there’s only a certain number of notifications showing at once and as I get it each observation generates a separate one, so that’s normal.
Post tags aren’t really used, so don’t care about them.

3

there’s only a certain number of notifications showing at once

But this is terribly unfriendly to the user - there is no way to view missed updates at all, is what this comment implies. That can’t be true. Or it SHOULD NOT be true.

that’s normal

It may be the way the site functions, but it is not normal. It is a bug. My updates should load in a stream, and users with multiple observations in the update should simply be grouped together. One user uploading 50 observations should not completely render my updates invisible and irretrievable.

4

Sorry, I missed the more part, no, it should work for you, did you try relogging to the website? If it doesn’t help what if you unsubscribe from the user and subscribe back?

5

Ok, this is a bit strange. I loaded the site in K-meleon, which is a Mozilla-based browser, and the functionality is as expected, so there is something wrong with my Firefox install.

I apologize for the lengthy and now somewhat useless post.

Maybe it’s not so useless, but I fail to see how it can help anyone, lol.

I’m going to download a fresh copy of Firefox portable and start over to see if something wasn’t reset or default when I tried before.

I appreciate your repsonse, @fffffffff, and I’m sorry if my reply to you was snarky - I assumed your response was based on the full content of my post, though, so I was surprised at your answer. Apologies.

For what it’s worth - I did log out and log back in. I also unsubscribed from the user in the latest update and refreshed the page, but had another user with 50 observations and had the same experience. When I re-subscribed to that user, and refreshed my “feed”, the same problem persisted.

I wish I had a better idea of what the problem on my end is, so that it could “be known”… but I assumed everything was default before and maybe it wasn’t.

Thank you!

3 Likes
6

P.S

I reloaded my original page, in the same browser as before, and this time (the 20th attempt or so) it loaded properly.

I’m extremely confused at this point, but all is functioning as it should be.

Thanks again.

1 Like
7

Honestly, this seems like an actual bug, or at least a design flaw. It’s really not working the way it probably should.

This limit to the number of OBSERVATIONS in the “All Updates” tab should be rather a limit on one sort of activity. If one user uploads 250 photos in 50 observations, I should get one entry in my feed that says user53877636 added 50 observations. And as it stands, that is what I get. One entry in my feed. But because there are 50 observations in the ONE entry, no more activity will load.

That’s intentionally obscuring current and relevant information that should be displayed in the feed.

This is a bit of a crippling behavior for the “All Updates” tab. One user uploading 50 observations is not a reason to truncate the rest of my feed. It’s very understandable that to manage load on the servers and to limit page load times that a limit must be in place, but the current configuration is dysfunctional.

I’m still unable to view my “Following” tab for the exact same reason. A follower of mine recently posted 50 observations, and my “Following” tab only shows that one entry, and it won’t load anything more - which means I just don’t get to see that activity. At all… ? Ever? Anywhere else? I honestly can’t figure that out.

That should be a rather serious concern, no? 50 entries in the feed - understandable limit. ONE entry in the feed with 50 observations? Not really useful at all, and it’s unnecessary if it’s just a coding issue that can be easily fixed.

8

Notification system is in the process of reworking, sure, it shouldn’t work like that.

9

when you click on More, look at the URL in your browser. it should be something like https://www.inaturalist.org/home?tab=updates&from=[update id]. what is the URL just after you click on More at the bottom of the page (not Show More in the bottom-right corner of the update box)? if you click More again, does the URL change? if the URL changes, click on More again, and what does it show now?

10

@pisum

I made a few short gifs to show you what I was seeing, and there were just two hiccups - where clicking “More” simply reloaded the page with no changes. But then everything else went smoothly. Clicking “More” loaded the next page of activity, and clicking more again continued through the feed.

But that was not what I experienced before.

Before, the page would reload with the exact same set of 50 observations from the same user (just one) and the same thumbnails, and it would do this every time I hit the “More” button.

I haven’t changed anything about my browser. Haven’t made any changes to my system since then, so I don’t know what happened before.

11

if these show the URL, then please share them. (as far as i can tell, the only image you’ve shared does not show the URL.) without these and without any other way to reproduce the problem at this point, it’s probably unlikely that any action can be taken to resolve whatever you saw.

probably it’s best to just move on since things are working at this point. if you encounter this kind of problem in the future, make sure you capture the URLs i noted, or take a video of the whole process of you clicking on More several times.

1 Like