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This question about nominations for Pro Tempore Moderators on Computer Science Educators Meta was a featured question, but was unfeatured on June 23. However, it sometimes still appears as featured on the main page of Computer Science Educators SE:

Screenshot of the featured question box, including freehand red circles

This might have something to do with the fact that the post was locked shortly after the tag has been removed.

This bug also extends to the API. During a period when they question appears in the sidebar, the API route /questions?tagged=featured&site=cseducators.meta returns:

{
  "items": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "discussion",
        "featured",
        "topic-challenges"
      ],
      "owner": {
        "reputation": 2721,
        "user_id": 58,
        "user_type": "moderator",
        "accept_rate": 12,
        "profile_image": "https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ZnN3lJjklJg/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAWE/zqGtDAyXfjo/photo.jpg?sz=128",
        "display_name": "thesecretmaster",
        "link": "https://cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/users/58/thesecretmaster"
      },
      "is_answered": true,
      "view_count": 91,
      "answer_count": 2,
      "score": 9,
      "last_activity_date": 1501024496,
      "creation_date": 1499711767,
      "last_edit_date": 1499961119,
      "question_id": 207,
      "link": "https://cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/207/topic-challenges",
      "title": "Topic Challenges"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "discussion",
        "faq",
        "featured",
        "new-users"
      ],
      "owner": {
        "reputation": 3275,
        "user_id": 1293,
        "user_type": "registered",
        "profile_image": "https://i.sstatic.net/dxcsS.jpg?s=128&g=1",
        "display_name": "Buffy",
        "link": "https://cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1293/buffy"
      },
      "is_answered": false,
      "view_count": 127,
      "answer_count": 0,
      "community_owned_date": 1499432641,
      "score": 9,
      "last_activity_date": 1499616804,
      "creation_date": 1499431354,
      "last_edit_date": 1499616804,
      "question_id": 203,
      "link": "https://cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/203/what-does-a-new-member-need-to-know-on-this-site",
      "title": "What does a new member need to know on this site?"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "discussion",
        "moderation"
      ],
      "owner": {
        "reputation": 266,
        "user_id": 23,
        "user_type": "moderator",
        "profile_image": "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/2cf2eee5993f6cf3b0b149c2f8c5a323?s=128&d=identicon&r=PG",
        "display_name": "Robert Cartaino",
        "link": "https://cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/users/23/robert-cartaino"
      },
      "is_answered": true,
      "view_count": 609,
      "answer_count": 7,
      "score": 15,
      "locked_date": 1498246037,
      "last_activity_date": 1498235396,
      "creation_date": 1496674251,
      "last_edit_date": 1498235396,
      "question_id": 75,
      "link": "https://cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75/accepting-nominations-who-should-moderate-this-site",
      "title": "Accepting Nominations -- Who should moderate this site?"
    }
  ],
  "has_more": false,
  "quota_max": xxxx,
  "quota_remaining": xxxx
}

This includes the nomination post as well as the 2 featured posts (at the time of this edit).

As Shadow the Hedgehog Wizard mentioned in their comment, the same issue appears with the Meta question containing the hat contest, which was locked shortly before the tag was removed (see the revision history for details) and is at the time of this edit still visible in the sidebar.

Improve this question
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  • 3
    Caching will often leave a post in the Featured list for a few hours after the tag is removed, but a week is out of the ordinary and does sound like a bug.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Commented Jun 30, 2017 at 19:50
  • 4
    @SevenSidedDie It's now been more than a week, and it disappears and reappears, and seems to effect every user.
    – thesecretmaster
    Commented Jul 1, 2017 at 14:18
  • 2
    This is using some unstable cache, SE developer has to manually kick/refresh it. (it happened more than once in the past.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 3, 2017 at 19:03
  • 1
    Still happening. Affects every user, and randomly shows up and disappears, at the same times for every user. It's always that meta post.
    – thesecretmaster
    Commented Jul 22, 2017 at 12:04
  • shouldiblamecaching.com
    – Optimus Prime
    Commented Jul 26, 2017 at 6:57
  • @SagarV no, we're talking here about whole week.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 26, 2017 at 7:19
  • 2
    And it strikes again with the Silly Putty swag contest. :/
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 26, 2017 at 14:46
  • @ShadowtheHedgehogWizard I think it's on purpose XD (I'm actually quite sure it isn't, but wouldn't it be funny?)
    – ItamarG3
    Commented Dec 26, 2017 at 14:47
  • @ShadowtheHedgehogWizard Thank you for mentioning that. I've included it in the question.
    – TuringTux
    Commented Dec 26, 2017 at 16:42
  • @JNat some more insight then just Status-Deferred would be preferable.
    – Luuklag
    Commented May 18, 2021 at 12:50
  • 1
    I removed status-review from a post that had been closed as a duplicate of this one back in April 8th, @Luuklag, and had meant to tag this one as status-deferred then but forgot — this has been added to the bug duty rotation, and will be addressed as part of that duty rotation. Once someone picks it up, there'll be more updates here.
    – JNat StaffMod
    Commented May 18, 2021 at 12:55
  • 1
    This is currently occurring for RPG.SE's community-ads post, which was unfeatured on July 24. Reported here: rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11706/…
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Aug 26, 2021 at 16:35

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8

This is now fixed, hopefully permanently. The issue related to a bug in the Tag Engine (which is used by the API and site when filtering by tags) that affected locked posts.

bug in tag engine
stopped refreshing indexes
on locked posts; now fixed

Improve this answer
5

The contents of the community bulletin are cached and only updated every 24 hours, so it's not unusual to have to wait up to 24 hours for the daily script to update the bulletin's contents (remove un-featured posts, add new featured posts).

If you've waited 24 hours and the bulletin still hasn't refreshed, you should ping an employee.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Providing this answer because other questions asking about this are being closed as duplicates of this otherwise unanswered question, which doesn't contain any sort of pointer to the 24-hour caching period.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Jan 20, 2020 at 6:31
  • I saw some changes (these changes) take effect soon -- the community bulletin changed within a few after each edit (editing the tags of the two meta-posts). But the change was unreliable (as described). So there is some mechanism for a relatively fast change. Perhaps though, who knows, there's also some once-a-day process as well to ensure that caches on all server are coherent.
    – ChrisW
    Commented Jan 20, 2020 at 9:09
  • There is a way to force the cache of the community bulletin to refresh for mods: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/353492/…
    – Luuklag
    Commented Nov 19, 2020 at 10:12

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