Notification doesn't hide when user posts in a topic and the topic gets moved to a private category

Support
1

Full quote of user:

After seeing a topic and reading and checking it, it was marked as “watching” for me,
after that it has been moved to a category i don’t have access to, but still recieved notifications of edits/posts inside, which was confusing as i had no access to that topic anymore.
So one thing to improve could be (so confusion like that wouldn’t occur)
to have notifications check if that user still has access to it and if not, ignore possible notifications.
(believe me, it’s really confusing, especially if the user experiencing it has no idea what’s going on)

2

I have only been able to reproduce this if the notification is generated before the topic is recategorized. For example, a user is watching a topic that receives a new post. After the new post is created, the topic is then recategorized to a category the user doesn’t have access to. The next time the user logs in, they will receive a notification about the post that was created before the topic was recategorized. If they click on the notification, they will receive the “Sorry, you don’t have access to that topic!” page.

Is it possible that this is what was happening with the user on your site?

2 Likes
3

Yes. That’s probably it. Since I was a moderator, I couldn’t check it.

1 Like
4

Another update from the user about what exactly happened:

2 Likes
5

Ok, I’m going to rename this topic so it makes more sense. A fix to this is to hide the notification when the topic is moved to a different private category.

6

Why would the notification hide? It was valid at the time it was sent.

7

Wouldn’t hiding it be better than confusing users with the “inaccessible” topic notification?

8

I think your moderators are doing confusing things, and the software is manifesting the results of those confusing decisions.

If you force a topic into a hidden category you will need to let the users involved know what to do, rather than just yanking the rug out from under them with no explanation. That’s the job of staff.

2 Likes
9

It wasn’t the moderators, it was one of those “careless” TL3 members who tried to handle the “bad-post” themselves by moving it to the #lounge category and pinging the moderators. I’ve reminded that user to use flags instead to avoid confusion.

After that “incident”, I’ve made a little apology note (Even though that TL3 user should’ve done it :disapproval:) about why the category was being moved around.

1 Like
10

I’ve got a user reporting a notification he can’t get rid of on our site. I wonder if this is why.

11

Aha this makes more sense as a TL3 event. Thanks for explaining. Still, it is rare to have a category only visible to TL3 that is actively in use, even rarer to have TL3 people actively moving topics into that category.

1 Like
12

I think the TL3 people are waaaay too proud of their lounge category, they put anything in there.

2 Likes
13

This is a culture thing first and foremost, not really something to be addressed in software.

1 Like