Dumb user

But if it only happens for this thread how can that be?

But if it were an inherent problem in the forum's mail function, why would it happen for one thread alone? Perhaps there's some combo of characters in this thread's emails that the mail server is choking on.

Well,

I am at a loss. If it were the AO mail system why only one thread and one member?

If it were Moira's mail system the same question stands?

I have just moved the thread from Tech Humour to General Chit Chat. I don't know anything about the vBulletin database or AO's software but sometimes doing something like that provokes a recalculation of values?

Moira, please let me know if you get two notifications of this post, thanks.

:)

Answer: FDISK

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Answer: FDISK

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Whose? yours I hope :lildevil:

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Edit Yes, I have two. Strangely, once I read one, the second one is marked read. That is, it arrived in my inbox in "read" state. When I have two that I haven't opened at all, they're both unread until I open one, then the other goes to being marked read.

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That is interesting Moira. I am inclined to suspect that the problem is with America On Line. If AO sent you two mails, even if they were duplicated, I would expect you to receive two distinct items, and that you would have to deal with them separately.

Similarly if you are sent an e-mail and inadvertently included on the CC or BCC list as well, you would receive distinct items.

I am assuming that you are reading your mail online, rather than downloading it?

If that is the case it seems that the AOL mail system is incorrectly generating a second copy, yet is retaining a direct link between them, such that it considers them to be the exact same item. This is why it marks them both as read?

I don't know why this is happening, but I do know that a lot of e-mails are deliberately duplicated: one in plain text and the other in styled text/MIME. This is to allow for different mail readers that people might be using, and is quite intentional. You only see one message, and it only opens one depending on the type of reader you have chosen to use.

It appears that for some reason AOL is separating the two formats to give you a virtual "siamese twin" record.


Can you find any clues in the e-mail headers of the matched pairs?

Also, what happens if you delete one............does the other one get deleted as well?

:)

Precisely why I theorized what I did. The 2nd one being marked read without opening is what tipped it. There's no way that should happen if they are 2 independent duplicate emails.

Hi JPnyc,

Could you ask around if anyone has been playing with the e-mail notification system, either as development, training, or tools testing?

There are testing tools that will modify an e-mail message so that you can examine both formats. If that were moved live by accident or used incorrectly with this thread and Moira's account as the test target, it could explain the circumstances.

You are supposed to use the specialised software to read the messages. I wouldn't care to predict what would happen if you sent such a modified message to a "regular" e-mail system?

As you are on the "end user" part of the system, I doubt if your development crew would see any need to inform you of what they were doing?

:)

Ha! You would say that :) blame gmail not AOline!

I'm pretty sure there's nothing going on with the mail system. All the development team is working on new sites and a google search addition. No one to spare to work on anything else.

Well, as I said in my post in the original thread (this is getting complicated now!), the second one was not marked as read and hasn't been this time either (though two notifications have been received). It's only for this thread though! That's the weird bit. It's a bit hard to lay the blame for that on AOL, in all honesty, though they're everyone's favourite scapegoat. If they were generating a second copy, they would be doing it for every email, or at least every forum notification.

Interestingly, they're showing as one item in my inbox, though it's two emails. And btw, no I am not reading my email online, why on earth would I want to do that when I have a splendid client like Thunderbird?