Scratch-www: Empty state for activity feed showing outdated activity, rather than "loading" UX

[coke11]

I wasn't able to get a screenshot, but this morning my activity feed said "ceebee favorited mincer man" "ceebee loved mincer man" "speakvisually loved mincer man" "speakvisually favorited mincer man" . But it said it was from 10 months ago! So - When I clicked on Speak's name, it said I wasn't following him. But about 30 mins after this happened, I checked and I was. This also happened to Scratchers faryal228, and D_i_a_v_I_o but for Diavlo it was a month ago instead of 8. faryal228 managed to get a screenshot
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/118845799/

I will be watching the activity feed throughout the day to see if I can repro

[mewtaylor]

Thanks for the report @coke11! Could you change the name of the issue to something a bit more specific to the bug you're seeing? Perhaps along the lines of "outdated activity showing up in activity feed", or something like that?

[coke11]

@mewtaylor Sure!

[coke11]

Changed

[mewtaylor]

thanks :)

[coke11]

No problem

[coke11]

This also happened to Novakitty. How weird!

[kaschm]

is this possibly related to https://github.com/LLK/scratchr2/issues/3928 ?

[mewtaylor]

Two peas in a pod!

@kaschm @jwzimmer I actually think this is likely a separate issue than that, though.

[coke11]

I can't seem to access LLK/scratchr2#3928... It gives me a 404

[TheGrits]

@coke11 That's because it's a private repository.

[jwzimmer]

@coke11 Sorry about that, the issue we linked to is that studio pages sometimes show outdated activity dates with no activity, like:

But @mewtaylor said it is probably unrelated! : )

[coke11]

Ah OK

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 10:38 AM, jwzimmer [email protected] wrote:

@coke11 https://github.com/coke11 Sorry about that, the issue we linked
to is that studio pages sometimes show outdated activity dates with no
activity, like:
[image: screen shot 2016-08-23 at 11 37 28 am]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1320456/17898504/0150fe92-6926-11e6-8238-800250013bc6.png

But @mewtaylor https://github.com/mewtaylor said it is probably
unrelated! : )

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[TheGrits]

@jwzimmer @mewtaylor
I just reproduced this.

So my internet was ridiculously slow because of other users on the network.

I got this and nothing else was loading. Frustrated, I ctrl+clicked the refresh button. It resulted in the same thing, except 10 seconds later...

~a couple more seconds...

boom.

Perhaps it is a sort of "fall-back" activity for the feed?

To add to the confusion, I'm not following Ceebee but I am following Speakvisually.

[mewtaylor]

@coke11 @TheGrits @kaschm @jwzimmer – it is indeed caused by using having filler activity that we put into the feed if nothing is happening (nice catch @TheGrits ). This data comes from https://github.com/LLK/scratch-www/blob/develop/src/components/activity/activity.json, added in the default props.

Basically, you see this when the site is slow, and taking a while to get actual activity from the backend. The filler file is mostly there for local testing purposes, when looking at styling/formatting of data.

This is not an ideal "default" state, though, as it does not convey to the user that the front-end is still "waiting for info" from the server. So, we should probably come up with a different one that conveys the correct info to the user.

[TheGrits]

@mewtaylor Maybe finding an ideal default state should be in a separate issue?

[mewtaylor]

@TheGrits I was thinking it should be this issue, and that we might want to change the name. Just because the reason this is showing up at all is because it is the default state, when waiting. What do you think?

[TheGrits]

@mewtaylor Sounds like a good plan to me!

[TheGrits]

@mewtaylor Would we want a text filler or would an image be appropriate for this? (kinda like on the 404 page)

[coke11]

@mewtaylor @TheGrits Would you like me to change the name of this issue?

[St19Galla]

@TheGrits @mewtaylor My computer does not seem to experience this, instead, it shows the default New Scratcher image when they first join saying "Here is where you'll see updates from Scratchers you follow." while it loads.

I personally like this better than placeholders :)

[coke11]

hm, sometimes that happens for me. It just seemed to be this one morning when everyone saw that

[TheGrits]

@St19Galla @coke11 My internet was much slower than that. I'm talking like a ten second wait for the page to load, and then it showed up.

[jwzimmer]

Reported today by @christanbalch (Production):

[TheGrits]

@jwzimmer That's interesting, it's retrieving the current icons but it's using the fallback activity items. 😮

[jwzimmer]

I just saw this activity on my own homepage after encountering the server issue page (Chrome, Mac):

@TheGrits it looks like here it was starting to load ceebee's old logo...

[mewtaylor]

@jwzimmer yes this issue is with the default state – at this point, it's a matter of design, as we'll have to figure out what the "loading" state needs to be.

[rschamp]

We've removed the default props from our components.