solved Group members unable to access Group Discussions intermittently

I know you hate that word intermittently, but this is what is happening...
I have had several reports in the past month of group members not being able to see the comments & comment box when they visit a group discussion.
These are members of the group, they are following the discussion and they have recently commented and often updated comments on the discussion.
They have reported getting an email notification of an update to the discussion, following the link to the comment, but finding only the Group Discussion header visible (see screen shot). after a few hours, they can return to the discussion using the same link and all is as it should be, with comments visible and they are able to add comments again.
I have not seen this myself, but at least four members have reported it in different groups and discussions and I believe it is seen on Mac, phone and tablet, with Safari and Chrome browsers.

Has anyone else heard of this?
I'm aware that time limits can be applied to commenting, but this has been disabled on our site.
updated by @lornawebber: 02/14/18 11:32:11AM

Are you sure they are logged in when they first go follow the link? If they're not logged in yet, then they would be seen by the system as not being members of the group, and they would see exactly what you are describing. You then say they have no problem 'after a few hours' when they return to the group... I'm guessing that by that time they are logged into the site and can see the replies in group discussions.
If your site its set so that only group members can see the replies to group discussions, then they must be logged IN to be counted as group members by the system.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 11/09/17 07:09:12AM

@strumelia - thanks for that idea. They have not mentioned having to log in again and almost all members stay logged in between sessions. I will ask.

LOL, 'intermittently' is fine when accompanied by steps to reproduce it. Its the "something is wrong somewhere sometimes" overtones of 'intermittently' that make it a daunting task to even start to look for what and where then figure out the why.

I like strumlia's idea, that could be it. Another guess could be caching related but its a far stretch, thinking maybe they are seeing the page as cached for a user not allowed to access it. And another guess could be their session perhaps. Since its the first page they land on after having the session just start up fresh maybe the "ok" needed to show that page isn't there yet and will be fore the next page load, but because that page has now been cached for them they see the cache version of it.

just guesses though.

@michael, I am not able to reproduce it at all in my Admin user but it is becoming a real problem for ordinary members. I've tested this in my non-Admin user and it happened almost immediately.
The users are definitely logged in at the time - you can see the user name on the menu bar. It is not confined to members that have just started a session.
It appears to happen after a comment has been updated. The comments on the page/discussion are inaccessible for a period of minutes up to several hours, before the user can return to the discussion to add comments.
I have asked them to clear their cache when it happens. This does not solve the problem.

In my non-Admin user, I went to a test discussion I'm following and updated an old comment there. The updated text didn't show after I had clicked the Update button. Cleared my browser cache and still it didn't show, even after adding a couple of random characters to the end of the url and reloading page. I clicked the cog wheel to update the comment again and the revised text was already in the update comment box. That's confusing and I assume due to system caching. The updated comment appeared on returning to the discussion a couple of minutes later. I edited another comment there.
I visited the Images Gallery, left a couple of comments on images, then went to a different discussion in the same group and added a comment. When I returned to the first test discussion, the comments were no longer visible.

I think this is significant: The @ name under the group owner's profile picture no longer shows the name, there is only an @ sign.
Going backwards through the browser history, the discussion page doesn't show comments, but I can go backwards to the comment update view, which show the comment text I updated.
I started a new session by logging out and in, and the discussion is still not showing comments or the group owner's profile name.
I attach screenshots of
1) the blocked discussion;
2) going back in browser history, the comment editing page;
3) the discussion seen from my Admin user just afterwards.

I just logged in again as the non-Admin user, put a comment on a discussion in a group, went to the group home page, then the Timeline. Returning to the discussion, it showed no comments (and only the @ where the group owner's profile name should be), so this problem is occurring whether a comment is updated or not.

Can you point us to where this is happening?


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Sorry for the delay, @paul . I'll put login details in a support ticket and links to the discussions I commented on and was blocked on. However, this is happening to quite a few ordinary members on a variety of groups and discussions. I used a Windows PC and Firefox. It has been reported on Macs and iPads too, with Safari and Chrome.

This should be fixed now - root cause was the worker process in the comment module that needed to add some new compound keys to the comment items was exiting early since your site has 1 million+ comments.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net