InformAction Forums

UA's No Longer Display

The board is no longer displaying User Agents.
So now, we have to specifically ask.

useragent

bump

bump

Trying to restore this functionality (was a pretty large patch lost in the migration).

And it seems to work: it should show the UA for new posts immediately, and for older posts as soon as their poster posts again.

.
(That covers two stones with one post, or is it two posts with one stone .)

Giorgio Maone wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 5:31 pm And it seems to work: it should show the UA for new posts immediately, and for older posts as soon as their poster posts again.

Thanks Giorgio, new posts show UAs again But old posts from when we had the previous UA string mods are not showing any UA, nor do they get backfilled with the correct UA upon poster posting - see e.g. viewtopic.php?t=25400, you were not using Firefox 110 for any of your posts there, and I didn't post that Waterfox post from Firefox 109.

EDIT Interestingly, I'm seeing some old posts in staff-only area that do have the correct old UAs? And that person hasn't been here since 4 years ago

EDIT2 Seems random which old posts have correct UA and which are displaying no UA? Here's a publicly-visible thread containing examples of both cases - viewtopic.php?t=26365

EDIT3 This randomness is not limited only to posts made under our previous forum software version. Here's a really old thread, also containing both posts that do display UA and posts that don't - viewtopic.php?t=245

EDIT4 Doesn't appear related to poster's post count either

Something is very wrong with how older posts that had UAs stored before are being handled. I'm sure the OP of viewtopic.php?t=26867 wasn't using or spoofing Firefox 17 on Windows XP for that post.

barbaz wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 10:44 pm old posts from when we had the previous UA string mods are not showing any UA,

They are gradually getting filled in over time. I'm now thinking the "not showing any UA" was just that it took time to convert all those UAs into a new format, and Giorgio chose to run that process in the background, instead of scheduling down time to do it sooner to just get it done.

However, there are still issues with incorrect UAs on old posts:

1) Looks like most of the incorrect UAs are posts where backfilling a NULL with a new value happened before the old values got converted over, and the old values didn't subsequently overwrite it. Examples of this include Giorgio's & my pre-forum-software-migration posts in viewtopic.php?t=25400

2) Some previously stored UAs are being incorrectly loaded -

barbaz wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 4:40 pm Something is very wrong with how older posts that had UAs stored before are being handled. I'm sure the OP of viewtopic.php?t=26867 wasn't using or spoofing Firefox 17 on Windows XP for that post.

And it's not just that one. Another example, I think, is kukla's posts in viewtopic.php?t=26365: And I also wonder if kukla might never have used that Chrome UA around here

Is it possible to restore the correct, previously-stored UAs in all these cases?

barbaz wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 12:52 am
And it's not just that one. Another example, I think, is kukla's posts in viewtopic.php?t=26365: And I also wonder if kukla might never have used that Chrome UA around here

Is it possible to restore the correct, previously-stored UAs in all these cases?

I've restored as much as possible now (it's not perfect, but should not be a lie either - those UAs are been user by those users at a certain point in time).
OTH I can confirm that spoofed UA of kukla's is indeed correct.

Giorgio Maone wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 9:56 pm I've restored as much as possible now (it's not perfect,

Well, it looks perfect to me. Really appreciate your efforts restoring this important feature. Many thanks!