Hi everyone,

I have a question about those little red speech balloons that show up (I think) when there's a new comment.

On my home page, I have an area devoted to the forums I'm watching--the heading says, you are watching X out of 102 forums, and under that is a list of each forum I'm watching. Every once in a while, a red speech balloon (actually it's two overlapping) shows up in that list. I think this means that there are new comments or a new thread posted to that forum. But often, when I go to that forum, there's nothing new there. When I go back to my home page, the balloon is gone.

What am I missing?

Believe it is when something new has been added to that forum

crawgarden said:Believe it is when something new has been added to that forum

Right, that's what I thought but when I go to that forum, there's nothing new there!

Is it a glitch or am I not understanding something?

After you click on that and find out there is nothing new, the icon should disappear until there are new posts. I find it sometimes shows up erroneously after I have read the last thread in a forum, but then it disappears after I click on the forum again. So not a persistent bug. Hope that helps.

If you're also watching a thread in that forum and you go there first, the forum itself will still tell you there's something new, even when the new post was only in the thread you just visited.

Baja_Costero said:After you click on that and find out there is nothing new, the icon should disappear until there are new posts. I find it sometimes shows up erroneously after I have read the last thread in a forum, but then it disappears after I click on the forum again. So not a persistent bug. Hope that helps.

That's exactly it, exactly what happens. When I go to the forum where there's supposed to be something new, I'm like, "Where is it?" When I realize there's nothing, I go back to my home page and no red bubble. So I guess it's a little glitch.

Okay, glad I'm not missing or misunderstanding something.

I've noticed that glitch too a few times.

The one that I wonder about is the green bubble icon with the question mark in it. I thought it meant someone had an unanswered question, but when I go there is no question in the thread.

plantmanager said:I've noticed that glitch too a few times.

The one that I wonder about is the green bubble icon with the question mark in it. I thought it meant someone had an unanswered question, but when I go there is no question in the thread.

Oh! I've never seen that one!

I've only seen it 3 or 4 times. It's not common.

The green question mark icon is on every thread in the Ask a Question Forum.

https://garden.org/forums/view...

When one of those threads is moved to another forum, the icon might seem uncommon.

Thanks, Zuzu. I didn't know that, and it must have been on some moved threads.

I often get the red balloons with nothing new. I just ignore them and rely more on the 'recent thread activity' which also posts on my home page.

I do the same as Bonehead. I've wondered if maybe the traffic volume can't keep up with some of those forums. I have noticed the issue seems to happen more on weekends. In some like Plant ID there is a new post before the red icon can go away.

zuzu said:The green question mark icon is on every thread in the Ask a Question Forum.

https://garden.org/forums/view...

When one of those threads is moved to another forum, the icon might seem uncommon.

Oh! How about that! What a good idea! And now, I've seen one!

!!!

Another possibility is if spam is posted and removed before you see it, then the forum will be marked as having a new post - yet when you check, there won't be any new activity.

Australis said:Another possibility is if spam is posted and removed before you see it, then the forum will be marked as having a new post - yet when you check, there won't be any new activity.

Of course, why didn't that occur to me? Makes perfect sense. !!!

zuzu said:The green question mark icon is on every thread in the Ask a Question Forum.

When one of those threads is moved to another forum, the icon might seem uncommon.

Yes, it does seem uncommon on another forum, but does it ever go away?

I don't think it goes away, but it might. I'm not sure.

tx_flower_child said:

Yes, it does seem uncommon on another forum, but does it ever go away?

No it does not, I move threads all the time from the Ask A Question Forum to the Plant ID Forum and the green question marks remain as part of the header. You can see quite a few of them there,