21

The /posts/xxxxxx/timeline link is showing a 500 error on some questions, for moderators only. Logged-out and non-moderator users (confirmed by multiple users at various reputation levels) are both able to see the timeline just fine.

Error page with "Oops! Something Bad Happened! We apologize for any inconvenience, but an unexpected error occurred while you were browsing our site.", etc.

I'm not yet certain what the circumstances causing this are, but will update as I find more affected pages. This bug appears to break one of the userscripts (Monica's Flag ToC) used by a number of moderators.

Pages affected:

Improve this question
12
  • It just shows that the first questions review was invalidated, but why would that happen in the first place there?
    – Laurel
    Apr 6, 2022 at 22:45
  • That is the sort of question that a moderator could easily answer if only the timeline view weren't broken...
    – Ryan M
    Apr 6, 2022 at 22:51
  • does stackoverflow.com/review/first-questions/31471557 work for you? this is a link to review from the timeline you mentioned
    – nicael
    Apr 6, 2022 at 22:53
  • @nicael Yes, that links loads just fine.
    – Ryan M
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:12
  • Along the same line, can you see the revision history? I only see the one entry (where it was created) which means that the post wasn't deleted and therefore I have no idea what invalidated the review.
    – Laurel
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:14
  • @Laurel the revision history link also loads just fine.
    – Ryan M
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:14
  • 2
    You say "some" are there others? Is it possible that something in that post is what's causing the problem? It's also possible that the issue is that the timeline shows content for mods that regular users can't see... so there's possibly something that broke there.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:16
  • @Catija I have seen others exhibit similar symptoms in the userscript in the past, but unfortunately I didn't investigate as deeply as I did here, and I can't immediately find any examples.
    – Ryan M
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:20
  • 1
    I can't get to that page even on my phone, so I don't think it necessarily relates to a userscript.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:22
  • 2
    Yeah, I don't think it's the userscript breaking anything, it's just how I happened to notice that it was broken (the userscript requests the timeline in order to display flags, so the 500 error breaks that functionality).
    – Ryan M
    Apr 6, 2022 at 23:25
  • 1
    I definitely repro'd this earlier, around the time Ryan reported it. However, I am no longer able to reproduce it; the timeline view loads just fine for me, before and after handling the VLQ flag on the post. What is interesting to me is that, with the timeline now visible, I can see there was a (self-)deleted comment on the post, which we were unable to see before (the "show deleted comments" UI wasn't appearing). I suspect that something to do with the comment was "stuck", which was preventing the "show deleted comments" UI from appearing and causing an error when loading the timeline.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Apr 7, 2022 at 4:49
  • 5
    That the problem was caused by a deleted comment being somehow stuck also explains why the revision history (and other interactions with the post) were working fine, since these don't attempt to show deleted comments. Regarding the userscript red herring: It's not the userscript causing the issue. We all verified without userscripts before reporting. The userscript breaking is a symptom of this problem, because the way the userscript works is by fetching and parsing the timeline view. With the timeline view unable to be loaded, the userscript also breaks.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Apr 7, 2022 at 4:50

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
7

We had some exceptions in our logs that may have been related at the time, so I addressed those, but ultimately I couldn't reproduce the issue here.

Fingers crossed that it stays that way. :)

Thanks for the report!

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .