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I keep getting notifications about favorites changing, but I've pored through all my stuff and don't see anything to tell me WHAT changed. Searched here, I do see others with this same quandary, many of which are several months old (about as long as I've been having this problem)...

So, if this is a "new" feature, can you finish it already?

If it's finished, can you fix it? It's worthless.

alt text

Sad, this issue is still here a month later (that's not to mention that it was present for at least a month before I got fed up enough to report it).

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  • 6
    @ken your tone is a little inflammatory there buddy.
    – James
    Aug 12, 2010 at 20:22
  • 3
    Yep, it's an old bug, it'll be fixed in 6-8 weeks. It happens because something in the post was edited, but it won't show you that, just notify you.
    – Lance Roberts
    Aug 13, 2010 at 0:31
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    @Lance Roberts: yes, I got one of those today (favorite change on Stack Overflow) and tried dogfooding with a negative result. I think ken has a point. Shouldn't this question be tagged with "bug", then? Or does a duplicate question exist?
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Aug 13, 2010 at 10:28
  • @James Calling me "buddy" is inflammatory; at least mine wasn't a personal attack like yours. :) p.s. What's inflammatory about my comment? Usage of the words "junk" and "worthless" to describe a bug-filled feature that doesn't work at all, ergo it is worthless junk?
    – ken
    Aug 13, 2010 at 16:05
  • This is frustrating because a site as large as this, with this whole "framework" ideology going on, shouldn't have a bug like this in production. Furthermore, a bug like this in production shouldn't live for more than a release cycle, but I've been seeing this for what seems like a month or 3... don't get me wrong, I like the framework alot and am glad to see it being grown and adopted, but when you have a bug like this right smack in the middle of it, it sort of ruins it all.
    – ken
    Aug 13, 2010 at 16:09
  • @Lance: Got a notification today, same result. Kind of ironic that you said it'd be fixed in 8 weeks and it's 2 months + 1 day today...
    – ken
    Oct 15, 2010 at 0:14
  • @ken, yep, that's the Meta way.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 15, 2010 at 0:31

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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As a temporary solution, you can disable notifications on changes to your favorited questions - there is now a checkbox under the prefs menu of your user profile, named:

I don't want notifications of activity on questions I've favorited.

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no more fav notification http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/465/nofavnorification.png Click for full size

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    what, no freehand?
    – James
    Aug 12, 2010 at 20:45
  • 2
    @James, I'm breaking free of the strangle-hold of meta's traditions!
    – jjnguy
    Aug 12, 2010 at 20:50
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    But then you could at least at some nice sparkly fx, no?
    – Georg Fritzsche
    Aug 12, 2010 at 21:46
  • @jjnguy -- What to stick it to the system by not following any of the meta rules!
    – Michael Kniskern
    Aug 12, 2010 at 22:54
  • Not that I don't want notifications -- I want working notifications!
    – ken
    Aug 13, 2010 at 16:05
  • @ken, you are welcome. Good luck with the working notifications thing...
    – jjnguy
    Aug 13, 2010 at 18:26
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To find what changed:

  1. Open recent changes (click the letter icon), https://stackoverflow.com/users/recent/84473 in your case.

  2. Click "favorites" and then "today" (or "yesterday" or "this week").

  3. Click on one of the items in the list (the link).

  4. Sort by newest, click "newest" in the line with tabs "oldest", "newest", and "votes". This step is not strictly necessary as step 3 should display the changed item, but you can see other recently changed items.

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    There is never anything in those lists, thus my frustrations; I've gone through every single permutation. After about the 5th time I realized that there was likely a bug, but I figured after several months it would have been resolved already.
    – ken
    Aug 13, 2010 at 16:04
  • @ken: yes, you are right. I had one instance today where I couldn't find it either. However, I do have one from 2010-08-09 - a new answer was added to a question: stackoverflow.com/questions/172380/…. Lance Roberts is likely correct it is a bug with an answer is edited.
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Aug 13, 2010 at 16:16
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This is a workaround, in the same vein as Peter's suggestion but it should have a much higher rate of success. Not a fix or answer to the issue of how we are still getting the empty reports, but this may still ameliorate the issue slightly.

Try the list of favorites in your user profile, as opposed to the envelope, when you encounter an empty report. Under the favorites tab is a sort option of "recent", which will list them in order of most recently active. Most, if not all, of the "invisible" reports will always be caught here, especially the ones involving those pesky answer edits.

It won't list separate instances of activity within a single question, but it will show you exactly which questions have had recent activity, complete with timestamps. And if you don't have too many recently active favorites then it should all be in the first two pages without needing cumbersome by-date navigation as with the envelope.

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  • I have had good luck using this to find the edits that triggered the last few of my “nothing shown after clicking on the envelope” favorite update notifications.
    – Chris Johnsen
    Sep 14, 2010 at 4:55
  • Thanks for the feedback. Please refer back to my original post, I've attached an image. I do not see the word "recent" anywhere, and it's not "today". After clicking 5 of the links, I finally found the offending edit.
    – ken
    Sep 14, 2010 at 16:25
  • @ken I am not suggesting you use the envelope, but your user profile. Your recent favorites section is right here. I don't deny that the envelope highlighting for edits but never providing them is frustrating - I'd love it to be fixed. But I also love providing some measure of workaround to reduce the frustration, so that until things change you have something that does work.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Sep 14, 2010 at 16:29
  • Thanks. I'm just ignoring any/all favorites notifications for now. As an infrequent user, it's simply not worth the hassle. In actuality, I've spent more time on this question than I have on any other...
    – ken
    Sep 14, 2010 at 16:37
  • @ken Well, as an added benefit, even if you have disabled favorites notification, this workaround is still of use to you! The "favorites:recent" filter in your profile is still going to be updated whenever activity happens, so now you can simply use it only when you actually care to check up on when something new has happened.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Sep 14, 2010 at 16:40

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