Impossible to read some notifications when using Legacy navigation

Bug
1

There’s a scenario where a user has messages notifications that they can’t possibly mark as read. This only happens when the forum uses the Legacy menu navigation.

Steps to reproduce:

  • set navigation menu set to: Legacy
  • user A sends private message to user B
  • user A removes B from the topic
  • user B gets notification about a new message
  • user B tries to read the message: fails, as expected (no access to the topic)
  • user B continues to have a notification (green circle) about a message they can’t read

If navigation menu is set to Sidebar, then even though B gets the same error of not being able to see the message, that attempt by itself is enough to mark the notification as read.

Some additional context: we have been experiencing this bug for a long while now because we are still on Discourse 2.8 (and just about to update). We assumed Discourse 3.0 would fix this, but only if one uses the new Sidebar/user menu. When using the Legacy navigation on Discourse 3.0, the bug persists as before: users can’t mark the notification as read in the case that they can no longer read the conversation they are being notified for. The new user menu seems to fix this somehow, but we are planning to go with the Legacy navigation for at least a while after upgrading to 3.0.

1 Like
2

I think there is a workaround here, can’t you clear notifications from https://meta.discourse.org/my/notifications ? Using “Dismiss All” …

3

I’m afraid it doesn’t: in that page, the Dismiss all button is disabled in this scenario, even though the green circle notification is still present — just no way to clear it. This is on 3.0.1 btw.

4

Looks like the same as Removing another user from a conversation creates an unclearable notification, right?

5

Yep, this seems to be a duplicate of it: same issue. This can be closed/deleted. The other topic was closed as duplicate of this one.

To be clear, it’s possible that this only happens if the only missing notification is the one that can’t be marked as read. If there’s multiple, this might work (have not tested), but then it would dismiss other notifications too.

2 Likes
11

Let’s test this workaround.

I am not sure how much engineering I want to invest around the legacy mode, eventually it will probably go.

Workaround would be:

  • Mod… @mentions user
  • User heads to notification in user profile and clears all.

Can you test it?

2 Likes
12

I have tested this and confirm that the dismiss button clears the unreadable notifications.

That said, we are bound to confuse already frustrated users as they might click the notification (the mention) before using the Dismiss button, either because they haven’t read our instructions yet on why were mentioned, or just because they need some handholding.

Well, at least there’s a workaround: some users have accumulated quite a few of these and will be happy to have that reset. We’ll be upgrading to 3.0 tomorrow and we’ll try to help them afterwards.

2 Likes