Getting up to date views of forum pages - "Zero Reply" page seems to work differently from others

[Gerald Higgins]

Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, or if this is down to purely my own settings, and not a general issue.

I'm in the habit of navigating round the forum mainly by using the buttons near the top of the screen, for
"Search New Posts",
"Zero Reply Posts",
and
"Subscribed Posts".

The "Search New" and "Subscribed" buttons do exactly what I would expect - they show me the relevant threads, and a message near the top of the screen says "search took 0.01 seconds" or whatever.

The "Zero Reply" button seems to work slightly differently. The first time I press it in each session, it does exactly the same as the others, but when I press it later in the same session it says "search took 9.69 seconds, generated 23 minutes ago" or whatever.
The threads that are shown, seem to be exactly the same as the threads that were shown when I first viewed it during this session. But often many of the threads now have replies, sometimes several of them, so they don't seem to qualify as "Zero Reply". AND, I know that there are often newer genuine zero reply threads that have been posted since I first viewed this page, that are not shown when I refresh it.

It usually gives me a fresh view of "Zero Replies" if I close Internet Explorer and go back in.

Is this just me ?
If not, is this behaviour intentional, or is it necessary for some reason, or a known bug ?

 

[Joe4]

It usually gives me a fresh view of "Zero Replies" if I close Internet Explorer and go back in.

Yep, I believe it uses your cache, so the view is not always automatically refreshed within the same session.

 

[Gerald Higgins]

Thanks Joe4, but I still don't really understand.

Why is it just this page (as far as I know) that works this way ?
Is this behaviour intentional ?
Wouldn't it be better if it worked as I expect, i.e. a fully up to date view each time I refresh it ?
Maybe there are reasons why that wouldn't actually be better - I wonder what they are ?

 

[Joe4]

Gerald, I wish I could tell you why it works the way it does, but frankly I don't know. But I am pretty sure it is a limitation of the vBulletin software that the forum uses, not anything that someone here consciously decided to do.

I have found that it does refresh, just not every time. I think it is a factor of time (maybe it refreshes every 15 minutes, or half-hour). I am not sure.

 

[Gerald Higgins]

OK thanks again for the reply Joe. At least the knowledge that it's not just me makes me feel a bit better

 

[Joe4]

I have been told that it refreshes the list after a certain amount of time (don't know exactly what that time limit is though). If it created a fresh search every time someone clicked the Zero Reply button, it would negatively affect board performance, which is why it works like this. I am on a few other sites that operate the exact same way.

 

[Gerald Higgins]

OK that makes sense. But in that case, why just this page ?

 

[Joe4]

But in that case, why just this page?

I am not sure I understand, opposed to what else?

Doing a "Zero Reply Post" involves having to do filters/searches against a large subset of the database, which is a bit labor intensive (which would bog down the system). So if they can limit the number of those that are happening at any one point in time, it helps system performance.

As someone who has been on this board a bit, I am sure that you have experienced periods of slowness on the board. We are trying to do all we can to limit those. This is one way.

 

[Gerald Higgins]

When I said "why just this page" I meant as opposed to the "Search New Posts" or "Subscribed Threads" buttons, which appear superficially similar. But I can appreciate the tasks that they actually do may be very different.

Thanks for your answers again Joe4.

You're right, I have experienced board slowness from time to time, and if this is a way that those in charge attempt to minimise that slowness, then I understand and accept it. I just didn't understand it to begin with, but you have shed some light on this - thanks !