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According to other answers posted here on the subject, the update should take place at 3:00AM UTC, every 24 hours. I find it very common recently to not run for 2-3 days straight (or maybe I wasn't paying attention before).

I suggest a simple feature to add on StackOverflow, to let users know what time their tag score was last updated. Consider how Tags tab currently looks in your profile:

enter image description here

It can look like this:

enter image description here

Color can be adjusted to be grey or otherwise make it less visible, so it does not distract a user, but remain there, if you need it. No more tag score anxiety.

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  • Related (as to why they aren't updating): Tag info not updated regularly on profile? and Tag counts are not updated and the issue is getting worse – psubsee2003 Apr 2 '14 at 19:42
  • The only real problem I see with this is that it would require SE to track an extra datetime for every single user just to track when something was last updated that should update every single day at 03:00 UTC. The error doesn't affect every user every time, so a global update datetime isn't useful. I'd much rather they focus on optimizing that query so it stops failing. – animuson♦ Apr 2 '14 at 22:45
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    @animuson: but it does affect all users. Either all tag scores (and top 30 answerers / askers stats) are updated, or none are. The date/time stamp would reflect the most recent successful commit. Still, I'd prefer the query to just work... – Martijn Pieters Apr 2 '14 at 22:54
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    @MartijnPieters AFAIK some users get updated some days while others don't. I'm pretty sure I've run across cases where users have reported their scores did update on days where others didn't. I can't imagine why a process failing part-way through would cause it to not update for everyone. It makes more sense that those who were checked before the process failed would remain updated, unless it compiles all the information together and then updates everything at once. – animuson♦ Apr 2 '14 at 22:57
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    It's one transaction. It all commits or nothing does. I track several tags rather closely and the top 30 rankings and tag scores remain in sync; if some users got updates and others didn't that would immediately be obvious. – Martijn Pieters Apr 2 '14 at 22:59
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    @animuson: Adding an extra field for every user opens the possibility of running the update in batches. i.e. pick random 5000 users every hour, for which last update happened more than 24 hours ago and update those, or smth similar. – Neolisk Apr 2 '14 at 23:59
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    Seriously, though, it looks like a very nice idea exactly because it allows to organize batch updates yet still show tag update as transparent process. There's nothing wrong with delaying some big tasks; what's wrong is making it seem like there's no delay at all. – raina77ow Apr 3 '14 at 5:54
  • @raina77ow: I thought about it for a while now, better to replace "random" with "sorted by last updated date ascending", so those who never got the update for days are priority 1. The longer you wait, the more chance to update for you in the next hour. – Neolisk Apr 3 '14 at 11:07

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