# RE: The [BLANK] has been removed by the poster/user



## CHICAGOÂ¤lollie (Aug 8, 2008)

Is there any specific reason as to why we now have "The journal/submission has been removed by _the poster_" and "The favorite has been removed by _the user_" notifications?

I mean, I suppose information like that is good to know and all, rather than clicking on a submission or journal to find that it no longer exists, _but_. If the notification is going to refer to everyone as "_the poster_" or "_the user_", wouldn't that render the whole point of telling us that somewhat useless?

If Fur Affinity's message center is going to notify us of removed entries, it'd make much more sense to leave the name of the journal/submission and the artist/user who removed them in the notification. Otherwise, we might as well just not be notified, as they don't actually tell us _what_ was removed by _who_.



It's like telling us you did something in the place.
The jig's doing something.
That whatsit is whatsat.
???? ???? ?? ???????.





etc.


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## jayhusky (Aug 8, 2008)

good point here, at the moment i find that people are uploading and deleting quite a bit and i just can't tell who deleted the items.


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## Ebon Lupus (Aug 8, 2008)

But everything is better now.


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## tisbod (Aug 8, 2008)

If I remember right, the whole reason that they couldn't just remove the journals and stuff that had been deleted has to do with the structure of the database that supports the messaging system. I don't think that it is impossible to do it, but simply not feasible. Since they can't simply remove the message, I think changing it like they did is a good solution to clicking on links that don't exist.


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## TakeWalker (Aug 8, 2008)

I prefer having the journal and submission notifications. Then at least I don't go clicking something only to have it load a big fat nothing.

The removal of faves, however, I could really do without. That's just not information I need to know, especially since I don't know who did it. In other words, it's just the system saying, "OH HAY somebody decided they don't like your shit anymore." Way to go, yaknow?


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## Arshes Nei (Aug 8, 2008)

TakeWalker said:


> I prefer having the journal and submission notifications. Then at least I don't go clicking something only to have it load a big fat nothing.
> 
> The removal of faves, however, I could really do without. That's just not information I need to know, especially since I don't know who did it. In other words, it's just the system saying, "OH HAY somebody decided they don't like your shit anymore." Way to go, yaknow?



Yeah, that favorites one is just obnoxious. Like, you I don't mind knowing a journal or submission was deleted for the time being since it would take you to FATAL SYSTEM MESSAGES before.


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## Stratelier (Aug 8, 2008)

> If Fur Affinity's message center is going to notify us of removed entries, it'd make much more sense to leave the name of the journal/submission and the artist/user who removed them in the notification. Otherwise, we might as well just not be notified, as they don't actually tell us what was removed by who.


If a submission/etc. was deleted before you check your messages, it might be easier on the visual real estate to simply add a line saying "(# were removed)" instead of specifically displaying each thumbnail with nothing other than "Removed by ______.".


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## CHICAGOÂ¤lollie (Aug 8, 2008)

tisbod said:


> Since they can't simply remove the message, I think changing it like they did is a good solution to clicking on links that don't exist.


I like the _idea_ behind their solution, I just figure: If they're going to have the message appear for every deleted journal/submission, why not change it to a kind of "[TITLE] has been removed by [USER NAME]" setup?



Stratadrake said:


> If a submission/etc. was deleted before you check your messages, it might be easier on the visual real estate to simply add a line saying "(# were removed)" instead of specifically displaying each thumbnail with nothing other than "Removed by ______.".


...or this! This is also good. C: Saves on clutter.





TakeWalker said:


> I prefer having the journal and submission notifications. Then at least I don't go clicking something only to have it load a big fat nothing.


I'm all for the removed-works notifications for the same reason, I just feel it could use a little more information and fine-tuning.

And in full agreement, yes. The un-faves have the potential to be extreeeeeemely annoooyyyiiiiing.


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## Ebon Lupus (Aug 8, 2008)

Programming is an art, when it becomes a chore you get Microsoft.

Don't you just hate it when there's an upgrade and they take away three useful functions to support some dope thing you never wanted to begin with?

I know, I'm having trouble staying on topic... it's a kind of birth defect.


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## Anbessa (Aug 12, 2008)

personally, I would prefer if at least the emssages read, "removed by/deleted by 'userXXX'". today I had five faves removed in short oder, and I'd like to know if someone was not pleased with my workings anymore, or just fooling around, cluttering my message box.
also, if you have someone on your watch list with personal issues who tneds to set up journals and delete them 5.2 seconds later, I'd like to know about who whas it, so maybe I can give support.
most likely, not, but there.

maybe the names of the user can be added to the deleted messages, I'd be happy as a kitten.


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## Arshes Nei (Aug 12, 2008)

Actually, to prevent drama I think the faves removal and un watch removals be silent.


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## Stratelier (Aug 12, 2008)

Arshes Nei said:


> Actually, to prevent drama I think the faves removal and un watch removals be silent.


^^ Seconded.


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## CHICAGOÂ¤lollie (Aug 15, 2008)

@Arshes: Thirding. Though we don't actually have that un-watch notification, so that's one less bird to bother with.



So, I _was_ actually looking for an answer to my opening question.


CHICAGOÂ¤lollie said:


> Is there any specific reason as to why we now have "The journal/submission has been removed by _the poster_" and "The favorite has been removed by _the user_" notifications?


Any takers?


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## Damaratus (Aug 15, 2008)

CHICAGOÂ¤lollie said:


> So, I _was_ actually looking for an answer to my opening question.
> 
> Any takers?




I think part of the reason for the addition of the removed message was to prevent the ghost submission issues that occurred on the site previously.  Someone would post and remove before people checked their submissions and the record of it existing would be there, but no submission would be available for viewing.  Then you wouldn't be able to get rid of the ghost without first getting new submissions in and selecting everything and removing it.

By putting in a place holder for the removed submission, you no longer suffer from the ghosts.  It's not the perfect fix, but it does remove the confusion that the ghost submissions caused.


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## Stratelier (Aug 15, 2008)

Now it just makes people paranoid about "WTF did I miss out on something???".


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## CHICAGOÂ¤lollie (Aug 20, 2008)

Sooo, apparently "unwatch" notifications exist now?

I actually tested this one myself between my music account and my regular account before I made this thread, and saw no notification for unwatches. But, over the past few days,  people are apparently seeing notifications for unwatches.

Note: I'm still not seeing it - Tried it again. But if others are reporting it, I'd think it's worth at least throwing in here.


Is that particular notification _really_ a good idea? Or, is it just more of a bug that shouldn't be happening at all?


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## Stratelier (Aug 20, 2008)

No, this is actually an indication that whatever submission you were going to be notified of was deleted before you had a chance to see it.  This is so that you can remove the leftover notice from your Inbox and it won't be counted towards the # of total new messages you have.

Really, they should just be pruned automatically with little (at most) notice to you -- treating them the same as other submission thumbnails is too extravagant.


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## RCRuskin (Aug 26, 2008)

Allow me to go on record as disliking this 'feature'. If there's a posting/message that has been removed from the system, I would prefer it not:

A. clog up the bandwidth
B. not be displayed

Since it is not in the system, I have no need to know about it.

There's too much stuff that does need my attention.


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## Rhainor (Aug 26, 2008)

CHICAGOÂ¤lollie said:


> Sooo, apparently "unwatch" notifications exist now?


No.

*Removals do not generate notifications.  Period.*  If you see a "watch removed" notification (I'm not sure how it's worded), it means someone Watched you, then un-watched you *before you read the Watch notification*.


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## CHICAGOÂ¤lollie (Aug 26, 2008)

Rhainor said:


> *Removals do not generate notifications.  Period.*



As of this time, this appears to be correct. Tested and tried with watches and favorites. It's not so much "before you read the notification", but "before the notification is cleared from your message center".

At the time that this thread was created, a removal of favorites would appear in the message center, regardless of whether a favorite notification was there for you to read or not. [Like in the image you'll see by clicking this link].
To explain, a user went through my gallery and unfavorited a bunch of work that she had favorited, in response to a journal related to the whole UNFAVORITED thing. Was joke, no action please. ):

This has since been fixed. Favorites removals no longer appear unless a notification exists in the first place.



In the case of watches being removed, it's true that they only appear if there is a watch notification waiting in the message center in the first place.

On _that_ note, however, it is now possible to spam "watch removal" notifications. Before these placeholders were implemented, continuously watching and unwatching would leave you with a bundle of the same icon, showing exactly who did the watch and unwatch. Now, thanks to the removed watch placeholder, it's possible to bombard a user with 20 or 30 "watch removed" notifications without the user knowing exactly who the other user was.

So, that one's a bad idea.


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## yak (Aug 27, 2008)

CHICAGOÂ¤lollie said:


> At the time that this thread was created, a removal of favorites would appear in the message center, regardless of whether a favorite notification was there for you to read or not. [Like in the image you'll see by clicking this link].
> To explain, a user went through my gallery and unfavorited a bunch of work that she had favorited, in response to a journal related to the whole UNFAVORITED thing. Was joke, no action please. ):
> 
> This has since been fixed. Favorites removals no longer appear unless a notification exists in the first place.


The notification about the removal of favorites never existed in the first place.
What you saw was a bug in the new coding that mis-detected the case of a removed favorite. It was actually the removal of the target of the favorite, not the favorite itself. 

This bug was fixed in revision #159





CHICAGOÂ¤lollie said:


> In the case of watches being removed, it's true that they only appear if there is a watch notification waiting in the message center in the first place.
> 
> On _that_ note, however, it is now possible to spam "watch removal" notifications. Before these placeholders were implemented, continuously watching and unwatching would leave you with a bundle of the same icon, showing exactly who did the watch and unwatch. Now, thanks to the removed watch placeholder, it's possible to bombard a user with 20 or 30 "watch removed" notifications without the user knowing exactly who the other user was.
> 
> So, that one's a bad idea.


It was possible to spam before that as well, with the only exception that you had the ability to see who that was.
Fixing this 'spammage' is just one click away - the click on the "nuke" button.

Not being able to tell who that was, as well as not displaying the deleted submission and journal's title on other messages is a side effect, not a feature. 
The messages tables are huge and thus have to be efficient as to both be queried on faster and not taking up hard drive space. Because of that reason each record in the messages tables hold only two pieces of information - your userid and the ID of the "message entity" - a watch record, a comment record, a submission or a journal record. 
If this "entity" is removed only one piece of information remains - a piece that tell that this message was left for you. This is why the placeholders do not display any information - it is because that information is unavailable.

Messages are not considered to be something of much importance so it is not worth it keeping redundant almost-never-to-be-used fields in the table, just to be able to tell who watch-spammed you.


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## CHICAGOÂ¤lollie (Aug 27, 2008)

yak said:


> If this "entity" is removed only one piece of information remains - a piece that tell that this message was left for you. This is why the placeholders do not display any information - it is because that information is unavailable.


...see, that's the part that I can't wrap my head around. If the system is going to tell people that a message _was_ left for them, even though it can't actually tell them what that message was, what's the point in having the message there in the first place?

"Hi, I'm here to inform you of something that happened, but I do not have the information to inform you."

Useful.



If the system is going to remove the information, you might as well remove the informant as well, because I _really_ do not see a point in leaving left-over "something happened" messages.


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