Recent days on OLO have seen some apparent glitches with the site. Something seems to have changed in the way that index page display preferences work.

Whereas before the selection of 'last post' display would stick when moving from General Discussions to the Articles, and vice versa, that preference now no longer does.

It also seems to be the case that if, after selecting more than the default five topic display in the General Discussions area, you then click 'last post', the display reverts to the default five topics in order of publication date. I also noticed discrepancies between the post-recency flags showing as between display in order of publication date and display in order of last post.

In simply observing posting activity on OLO I gain the impression that fewer posts are being made in the General Discussions area than normally are. I am just wondering whether this is because of these index display glitches. It would be interesting to know what proportion of regular (or for that matter, occasional) OLO users routinely use the 'last post' display for more than the default five topics in order to keep up with topical discussions.

GrahamY has confirmed in an email response to a feedback submission that he is able to replicate at least some of these site behaviours.

Have any other users noticed these problems, and if so, has it affected your use of the site?

We had a past discussion in which various participants advocated changes which might improve OLO software. To the best of my knowledge none have been implemented. I feel it is useless carrying on a discussion of this type.

FG you deserve a better answer than that.
yes I had trouble too, and yes it stopped me from posting, hence the number of posts down.
And finally yes it would be good if we could talk about such events more often.

On Thursday the last post display option was apparently working again when more than five topics were displayed in the General Discussions area of the Forum. By Friday the site had reverted to the behaviour complained of, with only five topics able to be displayed in order of last posts made.

It may be a good thing that the display preferences do not stick when switching from the General Discussions area to the Articles. If you had previously selected, say, 'display 20 topics one year back in order of last post', then moved to the Articles area, the Articles index page would then have taken forever to display as it loaded a year's worth of article titles. Far better the site reverts to the default display of one month back in order of article publication date and leaves the user to click last post and/or alter the time back wanted displayed.

One really strange bit of behaviour was that the red post-recency flags for the same topic differed significantly from the index in order of publication date to the index in order of last post. In one case it was showing '91 minutes ago' in red, while in the other it was showing '2 hours ago' in black: all of this in the time it took to switch from one display order to the other!

As a workaround, daggett has suggested bookmarking topics of interest if they are not close to the top of the index in order of publication date: this saves having to remember titles and search, or scroll through long displays, to find an old topic that may still be of interest, like, for example, '9/11 Truth', which is heading towards an apparent OLO record of 500 posts. Or 'Power without pride'. This workaround does not tell you at a glance what posting activity there may have been, however.

I have not experienced any actual difficulty in posting, only in viewing the indexes. Just curious as to whether others notice these little things.

Is it just my connection, or is the Forum slow?

I notice the 'last post' display order is still not working in the General Discussion area of the Forum for any more than the default five topics. Was the availability of this feature, when it was working as previously, something that was imposing a load upon the OLO servers, I wonder? Its not beyond imagining that if old topics were coming to be for some reason frequently accessed in this particular way, one that necessitated the loading of many index listings, that the feature may have been partially disabled. Is this so, or could it be that something has changed in the OLO site software, such that my browser (Firefox) no longer interacts with it fully?

Just in case it is of any relevance in this context, I re-post this post of OLO userID bushbred: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8701#137727

"From Bushbred.

Been having trouble getting in.

Is it okay now?
Posted by bushbred, Wednesday, 25 March 2009 8:56:23 AM" [To the current article discussion 'How our political system fails us']

I have a recollection that bushbred has claimed to have a dial-up internet connection. If this post is in fact related to difficulty in posting, or slowness of the OLO site, then it would appear the unavailability of full 'last post' index order has not improved other routine aspects of access to the site. I note Belly also mentioned difficulty in posting earlier in the thread, which is something I have not experienced.

My impression is that posting activity is down a bit in the general discussion area, but OLO would have the real figures. Just wondering if there is an as yet not fully recognised technical problem, one not serious enough to generate feedback, but there nevertheless.

Slightly OT, GrahamY has a blog, 'Ambit Gambit', on the OLO site. Is it possible for other OLO users to have such blogs on the OLO site, and if so where can they find out about the rules and features relating thereto?

Just for the record, at around 1:00 PM EDST I was able again to select 'Show 10 topics, one month back' while in 'Last post' display order, AND THE PREFERENCE STUCK! I got ten topics in correct order of last post! Next I tried 'Show 20 topics, one year back', and it worked.

Yippee, things are back the way they were. Not only that, but pages are seemingly loading much quicker than they were earlier today.

The thing that made me check again was noticing that my own userID in the 'Users currently online' panel was no longer displaying, although I was clearly online, whereas during the recent difficulties it was coming up as the first entry every time I refreshed the 'Welcome to the Forum' page. This does not greatly worry me: its just a quirky behaviour of the site that I know Ludwig has commented upon before, and I comment on it now only in case it is in some way related to these recent glitches and is of help to OLO staff.