[Bug] Link in Community notification goes to wrong page?

edt · 2022-09-13T11:08:25.000Z

I’ve been seeing this occasionally for a while but I finally got one that was pretty egregious so I figured I’d bring it up:

In the Spiceworks Community notifications that show up in emails, sometimes it incorrectly calculates what page number goes with a given comment.

The system sent me a notification for a new comment in the “I made the next pepper level” thread that was posted yesterday afternoon. But as you can see from the screen shot, when I went to the link ( https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/post/10218952?utm_campaign=new_post_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new_post_notification ) it got the comment number right, but the page number it calculated is way back in 2017!

5e376159-e41a-42ab-80b6-b86823d1abc7-Annotation_2022-09-13_054000.png800×578 87.7 KB

Weirdly, it only made that mistake the FIRST time I went to the link.

The second time, it calculated the page number correctly.

clutka · 2022-09-13T11:27:01.000Z

I’m fairly sure this is a known issue. If you click the link again, I believe it moves to the correct page. It is more prevalent on mobile.

Mobile App Long Topics may be applicable.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2022-09-13T11:44:25.000Z

Okay, this one is odd. I thought I knew the issue… but I was wrong. I thought it was an issue with you going to Responsive Topics due to the number of topics being different on that one (currently 50 vs 25). But, since it’s an anchor to the exact post… that should work regardless.

But, it also looks like you’re not going to the Responsive Topics but the logged-in one (there is an issue we see from time to time where someone is logged in but goes to Responsive… but the two are visually distinctive).

This should be addressed when we move everyone over to Responsive Topics (ie, logged-in members) as we do change the structure.

Old anchor: Official "I made the next pepper level" thread

New anchor for the same post… which I actually cannot show because it highlights another known issue that once you get past a certain number of pages (over 100, I believe), Responsive Topics don’t work. I’ll see what the status of the bug is.

But, let’s use this post for example:

Old anchor: Official "I made the next pepper level" thread

New anchor (same post): Official "I made the next pepper level" thread

I’ll play around a bit more with it, in case it is something easy to address. But, there is a good chance this will not get resolved until we move everyone over to Responsive Topics. The upside is, much like MAINSTRIKE points out, if you try the link again, it should work properly.

edt · 2022-09-13T13:09:21.000Z

Sean (Spiceworks):

I’ll play around a bit more with it, in case it is something easy to address. But, there is a good chance this will not get resolved until we move everyone over to Responsive Topics. The upside is, much like MAINSTRIKE points out, if you try the link again, it should work properly.

Yep, I noticed that if I clicked through from the link in the email a second time, it went to the right page.

scheff1 · 2022-09-14T10:20:03.000Z

There exists a known bug in such a context and be known for at least a year. It might be different of yours but overlap. And I wanted to write a topic too when time permits. The one I’m experiencing more often does land either on correct page but several posts wrong or even on wrong page (less frequently). A single reload does not help on my FireFox web browser. I must repeat again and again or manually move to the correct post. The situation seems to be a dynamic race condition and hence symptoms will be temporary. But a single refresh is usually not sufficient and scrolling or moving to next pages is a workaround.

edt · 2022-09-14T10:35:45.000Z

scheff1:

There exists a known bug in such a context and be known for at least a year. It might be different of yours but overlap. And I wanted to write a topic too when time permits. The one I’m experiencing more often does land either on correct page but several posts wrong or even on wrong page (less frequently). A single reload does not help on my FireFox web browser. I must repeat again and again or manually move to the correct post. The situation seems to be a dynamic race condition and hence symptoms will be temporary. But a single refresh is usually not sufficient and scrolling or moving to next pages is a workaround.

Well it’s not a refresh that fixes the issue for me – it’s going to the link in the email a second time. Because the link in the email redirects to different link with a slightly different format.

For example, for the one that just happened to me, the link in the email starts with: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/post/10220066 …

which the server end should correctly redirect to: Spark! Pro Series - 13 September 2022 66…

So the server end takes a link of the form …/topic/post/ and rewrites it to …/topic//page=#entry-

It’s like the calculation is off for calculating the page number the first time it processes the mailed link for a given user.

scheff1 · 2022-09-14T13:28:57.000Z

EdT:

For example, for the one that just happened to me, the link in the email starts with: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/post/10220066 …

which the server end should correctly redirect to: Spark! Pro Series - 13 September 2022 66…

So the server end takes a link of the form …/topic/post/ and rewrites it to …/topic//page=#entry-

I usually don’t click on the links in those email notifications. But I encounter such notifications also in the subscribed view. When referencing a post, I get and use the first form. The second form should be equivalent. Even after a topic gets featured, it should not change the page break while needing more space to display the first web page due to inserted picture. I don’t see a server rewrite. In different context and different views, I get one form of URL or the other form. These should be equivalent. The undisclosed content management system used by Spiceworks should create both forms and use them both according to context.

And in your last form, you’ve a typo. You used the slash separator once too often. The last one should be a different separator, the question mark.

I had about 2-3 cases where this second form lead me to wrong page when coming of the subscribed view. Much more often, my web browser moved my view several posts apart on correct web page. But in contrast to you, I did not use the URL of notification emails but the URL of subscribed view instead.