Members total posts not showing correctly

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geoberni
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Posts: 3565
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:19 am
Location: North Leicestershire
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Members total posts not showing correctly

Post by geoberni »

Random bug I just noticed, which may be a small or big issue, but yet another indicator of the problems with this forum and whomever is supposed to be looking after it. I understand that we actually pay for this to be run for us...

Browsing the Work/Education Topic, I noticed that 'mantamagicd85' showed a Total Posts of 0, despite having a post which I was reading so it should at least show '1'.
viewtopic.php?f=70&t=36873&start=60#p573618
Looked at their profile and it also says Total Post 0, yet when you click 'Search User's Posts' it shows 7 results.

My own profile currently shows 'Total Posts 171', but if I click on 'Show User's Posts', it returns 169 results, so why is there a discrepancy? Why is this forum suffering with such silly little bugs?
Basil the 1955 series II

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Re: Members total posts not showing correctly

Post by Admin »

Thanks for the message. The user you mentioned actually has seven posts, rather than just the one you've read. The answer to your conundrum lies in where the posts were made - not all of the forums on the board count toward an overall total, and posts in those will appear, but not add toward the Post Count you were looking at. Why? Who knows, it certainly predates my involvement, but back in the mists of time I suppose it's possible that someone may have thought that the member 'levels' - Newbie, Minor Addict, Minor Maniac, etc. - shouldn't be added to by posts in, say, the Off Topic forum's Three Word Story thread. That's merely an example - I haven't looked at which particular forums attract an increase in count because I don't really think it matters much - the 'issue' is solved. I believe that your Deleted Posts also increased the count when they were made, but don't subtract from it when removed.

As to other bugs, well, yeah, you got a point. PHPBB, the software that runs our forums, is when all is said and done a distinctly average bit of kit. Were the club creating a board now, I doubt that PHPBB would even be in the running, let alone the tool chosen. But that ain't where we are, is it? We have forty-odd thousand topics, and almost half a million posts, started in a legacy program that doesn't even exist now, and gradually evolved over many years. Given some of the previous buggy versions it's been running, I'm amazed we have the old stuff at all :(

The answer is really to archive off all the current content to a read-only, indexable and searchable, lightweight forum. And to create a brand new forum, utilizing a current commercial product, and start again. The issue with that solution is the userbase, who have indicated a number of times that they are somewhat resistant to change, and with the best will in the world a new forum would never look and operate like the current one.

So, anyway, a perfect example of Occams Razor. Hope that helps

(Thanks also for the potential spam report - as you intimated, it'd be a long play game if it were, so we'll let it lie and see what happens)
Mike Dean
MMOC Webmaster
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