Didn't get notifications of comments on a flag

Bug Reports
1

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Firefox

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/607899

Description of problem
I was involved in a taxon flag yesterday and had been notified for all incoming comments yesterday, this morning I had no notifications for new comments and was surprised that other parties hadn’t weighed in. When I checked there were five new comments on the flag that I hadn’t been notified of.

I didn’t receive many other notifications over the night so they didn’t get lost, and they weren’t on my dashboard.

2 Likes
3

This has also happened to me several times in the past year. I have been unable to correlate it with anything, so it appears like an intermittent and rather unpredictable bug.

If you make any flags for trying to debug this, I’d be happy to help report whether i’m notified.

3 Likes
4

It happened again. Same flag, a dozen comments came in and I didn’t get a notification on any of them. I got lucky that someone @ 'ed me.

It really is counterproductive to say: don’t discuss taxon issues here on the forum when the other option doesn’t allow for discussion.

5

It’d be helpful to know if the system thinks you’re subscribed to the flag or not. If you go to the bottom of the page, below the comment box, what do you see?

Do you see this?

image

Or this?

image
image810×184 11.9 KB

6

Thanks, I hit subscribe. Is that necessary when in a flag discussion?

1 Like
7

If you comment on a flag, you should automatically get subscribed to it. So either

  • you weren’t ever automatically subscribed (which would be a bug)

  • you were automatically subscribed but somehow became unsubscribed (which would be a bug)

  • you were automatically subscribed and then you manually unsubscribed from it by mistake (which would be user error).

I suspect it’s probably a bug, but do you remember updating any subscriptions, or perhaps accidentally clicking the “Unsubscribe” link here?

1 Like
8

I don’t recollect unsubscribing, and seeing where the unsubscribe button is, I don’t think I accidentally clicked it. I was notified of the comments coming on the first day of discussion, but didn’t receive updates over night or the next day.

1 Like
9

I’ve had this happen and I’ve also had the reverse happen. There’s been at least two times that I receive a notification for somebody commenting on a flag and it’s a flag I’ve never interacted with and never even seen before, but I’m somehow subscribed to it.

I know I didn’t subscribe to the one for sure because when I got the notification, the flag was only a couple of minutes old and I had been on the site for longer than that and hadn’t clicked on the flag or seen it. Wasn’t tagged in a comment and the flag had nothing to do with me. I didn’t really care and assumed it was somehow my own error but maybe this is a bug that occurs more widespread.

1 Like
10

Was it for a taxon, or something else?

1 Like
11

Yes, both that I recall were for taxa.

12

Thanks, I’ll see if I can replicate it on our test server.

1 Like