How are the game forums sorted?

[Meeplelowda]

The status says:

open: Bug has not been reproduced by developers yet

Does this status mean someone has actually tried to reproduce it and failed, or just that it hasn't been reproduced for any reason (like no one has tried yet)? Because all we have to do is show a screenshot of sub-forums with new posts appearing mixed in between sub-forums with older posts. It is a bit of a pain to scroll through over 100 rows just to make sure nothing new has popped up.

Yeah, it's a bit confusing - basically that's the default status before anyone has responded to it at all. In this case it clearly doesn't mean someone from BGA has tried and failed to reproduce it - either no-one has seen it at all, or no-one wants to look at it because (presumably) other things are considered a bigger priority

It's possible that it's something they didn't break, and therefore can't fix. Like when phpBB removed the integrated language translation functionality. I don't know how much they just use phpBB "off the shelf," so possibly something in phpBB itself got borked.

[Jellby]

They mess up about a lot with javascript, so whatever changed in phpBB (if that's the case), they can modify or work around it.

To prove it, and as a proof of concept, I created this user script, that I can run with Greasemonkey in Firefox (and probably other extensions/browsers). It's not fully satisfying for me, because they have the forum content in an iframe, which I cannot access directly from the user script, so I had to create a link near the top to show "Sorted game forums" (perhaps with other extensions/browsers it works differently).

Code: Select all

// ==UserScript==
// @name     BGA forum
// @version  1
// @grant    none
// @include  https://boardgamearena.com/forum
// @include  https://boardgamearena.com/forum/index.php
// @include  https://forum.boardgamearena.com/?*
// @include  https://forum.boardgamearena.com/index.php?*
// ==/UserScript==

var f = document.querySelector('iframe');
if (f) {
  const link = document.createElement('a');
  link.href = f.src;
  link.text = 'Sorted game forums';
  f.parentElement.appendChild(link);
  f.parentElement.insertBefore(link, f);
} else {
  var l = document.querySelectorAll('.forabg');
  for (let i=0 ; i<l.length ; i++) {
    if (l[i].querySelector('#cat_18')) {
      var p = l[i].querySelector('.topiclist.forums');
      var L = p.querySelectorAll('li');
    } else {
      l[i].style.display = 'none';
    }
  }
  for (let i=0 ; i<L.length ; i++) {
    let t = L[i].querySelector('time');
    if (t) {
      L[i].d = new Date(t.attributes.getNamedItem('datetime').nodeValue)
    } else {
      L[i].d = new Date('1970')
    }
    L[i].t = L[i].querySelector('.forumtitle').text
  }
  var LArray = Array.prototype.slice.call(L, 0);
  LArray.sort(
    function(a, b) {
      if (a.d < b.d) return 1;
      if (a.d > b.d) return -1;
      if (a.t > b.t) return 1;
      return -1;
    }
  );
  for (let i=0 ; i < LArray.length ; i++) {
    p.appendChild(LArray[i]);
    console.log(LArray[i].t);
  }
}

[Phoxtrot]

They used to be sorted according to the timing of the last message posted.

I think they are now sorted according to the timing of the last message posted BEFORE the last change.
In other words, a completely useless ordering.

[Jellby]

One month later, they have acknowledged the bug and say they're working on a fix. There's still hope.

[Meeplelowda]

One month later, they have acknowledged the bug and say they're working on a fix. There's still hope.

I got the e-mail about this and was somewhat encouraged.

[robinzig]

Me too.

PS: it's definitely not ordered by "last message but one", as the reply a couple up from here was guessing - I don't know what actually is going on but it's definitely fixed now no matter what posts are made and when. I don't know the logic of that curently-fixed ordering, although it doesn't really matter - trying to quickly see which posts you've missed when you have a forum of several dozen games you've played is frankly a nightmare with the default ordering gone.

[Tisaac]

I would guess it's just sortes by time of subforum creation, so basically when the game hit beta

[robinzig]

I would guess it's just sortes by time of subforum creation, so basically when the game hit beta

I really don't think so, based on my list. If you just look at the top 2 games on it - Terraforming Mars and Nimalia - that seems very plausible, as they both only hit Beta in recent weeks. But the next 2 are Hanabi and 7 Wonders Duel, which have both been on BGA for forever, way longer than many games I have way further down my list.

Actually, those 2 recent games only appeared - having reached Beta - since the bug first happened, so it's possible that any "new" games since the bug happened are indeed added in this order. But as I said, it doesn't explain the order before that.

[Romain672]

It's sorted by last post when the sort breaked.
New games (I suppose what Tisaac said) are put in top.

It's still visible: skip the first 20/50 games, then look at the last post done. 80% of games will be in chronological order of last post.

[Wreckage]

This might not be related, but about that same time a similar bug started on the suggestion pages. When you open a table, and try to send suggestions to other players to join your game, the first person receives the suggestion as they should.

But if you try to send a suggestion to a second player, the list immediately jumbles, and the name you just clicked does not receive a suggestion, some other random player does. At that point the list is no longer sorted by order of elo like it used to be. It is simply random and unusable.