Hello,
in March of this year, the forum, when used from the client, began caching its data and not displaying the updates in realtime. Of course, if this was done because of too high server resource usage or something similar, that's completely understandable. However, I wonder if it was done to fix the bug that sometimes occured and the forum didn't work briefly from the client. If that's the case, the bug was not fixed.

You may be wondering, why is this so annoying? The cache updates about every minute, isn't that fast enough? In my opinion, it is. The bigger problem is that this caused a lot of bugs, and what I call confusing behaviour for new users, who don't even know about this change. Thankfully, most of the major critical bugs were fixed, but some still remain. Here are a few examples:

1. At some point, you are going to receive a notification that you have got a new permanent message. You are going to open your inbox to read it. It will say, Unread, followed by the name of the discussion. You press enter, but surprise, there is no new message. The cache did not update, and you have absolutely no idea what is going on, and where is that message.
Sometimes, though I currently have no idea what causes this, the message may even appear, and you are able to read it successfully, but once the cache updates in a minute, the discussion will again show as unread, so you have to read the message again to avoid receiving this notification each time you enter. I'm not sure why that happens, it may happen only when opening it at a specific time. Similarly, when sending a permanent message, you will of course not see it in the list, so you may think that it did not arrive correctly.

2. Wrong cache appearance: The cache can be completely messed up, depending on the last person to open the forum before the update. This can be noticed in 3 scenarios.
First, in poll topics. Sometimes, you open a poll topic, and open a poll. Suddenly, you will notice that a random vote appears as checked, even though you never voted on it. In reality, you really didn't vote on it and the vote is not recorded, but you just got the wrong cache of some person that really did vote on it. I haven't confirmed, but this may even allow to see the results even if you never voted.
Second, the appearance of normally hidden forums. I can give more concrete examples if necessary, but to avoid naming any specific forum, if a user normally having access to a hidden forum was the last one to open the forum before the cache update, this forum will display for every user, even though it is supposed to be hidden. You can't view any topics inside it, but the forum will stay visible for even longer, about 15 minutes, since I think the forum list has a different, less frequently updated cache. The reverse situation can also happen, you are normally supposed to have access to a forum, but you don't, because you got the wrong cache.
Third, the recent topics list can also be completely buggy. If a Spanish user opens the forum, your recent topics list will be in Spanish after the cache update. Note that this definitely does not happen always. I am not sure if they have to be at your table for this to happen, and your table has to be in English, but it is more rare than the other two bugs. This applies to popular topics as well.

3. Voting on a topic can also be quite confusing, because your vote is not reflected right away, even if you re-enter the topic. You still have the options to vote plus or minus 1, so you may have the impression that you did something wrong or that this does not work.

In conclusion, it would be nice if we returned back to the old realtime client forum. If this is not possible, in my opinion, there are a lot of items to improve regarding the caching feature, so that it is less confusing and more reliable.

Thank you for your considerations and any work done to resolve this.

Hello,

Thank you very much for that very detailed report.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to go back. The cache has been put in place to make less requests to the system, because many ended in an error and the result was that the forum was randomly said to be inaccessible for a while.
Before putting a cache, it happened hundreds times a day.
I know that this problem hasn't disappeared totally, but it's still much less frequent. As far as I know, it happens only a few times a day now.

However, I though that the problem of randomly seeing spanish forum had disappeared completely. I must examine when it could occurs. And I didn't think about hidden forums.

I'll try to improve the cache and take your indications into account, but it isn't as easy as you think.
Thank you.

Hello,

I have made some changes in today's update. Is it better or worse now ?

i'm seeing a Label Accepted and A Label Ongoing after some topics.

Hello,
after initial testing, yes, it's much better today.

Voting works correctly, permanent messages work correctly as well. Hidden forums bug may need some more testing time, but it seems resolved as well for now.

Only one item that I forgot to mention in my initial report, but this is not such a big problem.
In the past, when you pressed enter on the option to subscribe to this topic, the option would change to unsubscribe from this topic, letting you know that everything was done correctly. However, because of the cache, the option now still stays called subscribe to this topic, and it can lead you to keep pressing enter multiple times and thinking that you haven't really subscribed in the end. I think, though I'm not completely sure about this one, but this option also used to have the wrong cache a couple of times, and it would say unsubscribe from this topic even if I am completely sure I never subscribed, and verifying from the website I indeed wasn't subscribed. So this is, I think, the last item regarding the cache from my side.

I understand that these bugs aren't easy to deal with, in fact even testing alone is more difficult than some others, so I can imagine resolving them is even more so.

Regarding errors of the forum being unavailable, to be honest, with the cache VS no cache, I notice only one difference.
Previously, the message "forum and permanent messages are currently unavailable" was indeed much more common. However, the unavailability of the forum isn't any less frequent for me, it's just different now. Now, I occasionally get this message, but what happens much more often is that the forum opens perfectly fine, and I get the list of forums. However, upon opening one, I only have open on the web and go back, as if the forum is just empty.
This always resolves itself within less than 15 seconds, and the second time almost always works, so I am not sure if this is related to any cache updates.

It's worth noting that all of this started only after the forum update with the polls feature. Before that, cache or no cache, the client forum worked 100 percent of the times for me.

PS: Whenever the forum is not available, and you are supposed to receive the message notifying you of this fact, if you are on a table, this message instead displays a string name, nohttp. The message works only from the main roomm. This may also be a minor bug worth fixing.

@Zzeta Labels are a new feature. I'm not completely sure if it will be explained later, but it seems like you can add a label to a topic you created, such as resolved, ongoing, etc… In case of a bug report, or it can probably be useful for tournaments, done, cancelled, full, etc…

Edit: The feature has been explained here

well the inbox delay not fixed for me if you mean that

Hi,
@Godfather you are right, I get the same experience if I send the message, I still have to wait a bit for it to show. However, in my case, if I receive one, then everything works as expected and I can see it right away.

There is one thing though, in this case it will still show that it is unread until another update happens, but in this case this is just a misleading display and the message is not really unread and at least you will not get this notification anymore, you only have to wait a moment.

Hopefully it's the same experience for you, otherwise yes, I was talking about the inbox delay. Of course, it's possible that this is different, I've only done some limited testing, and not even a day passed, so let's wait a bit and see how it works for others.

I got an inbox yesterday, and back then, I was able to read it. Today, I came online and it said I have a new inbox, it was yesterdays one, so I read it again. After reading it, I logged out and in because it did not want to mark as read. When I logged in, there was no notification of any new message, but it was still marked as unread. So, the notifications seem to work, but the read/unread issue stayed.

Edit: After posting this, it didn't show anymore that it was unread. Maybe then it is still taking some minutes to refresh, but still. I was able to read it yesterday, and even so I got the notification today.