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Buddy read comment page numbers changing
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maddychanceSep 26, 2022
Hello!
I'm encountering an issue with buddy read comments where when I add the page number for a comment it changes the page number (but remains the same percentage) when I publish the comment, which could lead to spoilers! For example, I just tried to leave a comment at page 274, which was 50%, but when I published it it changed the page number to 272 (still at 50%). I had to delete the comment because if my friend uncovers the comment at page 272 they would see a spoiler for two pages later. I also tried leaving the comment for page 275 (51%), but it changed to 278 (also 51%), so at that point my comment wouldn't make any sense when it was uncovered or they would have to flip back multiple pages to understand the context.
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We now store the user's input page number or timestamp and display that to any users who have the same edition marked.
For estimated page numbers/timestamps, we ensure that what's displayed is the maximum page number or timestamp that corresponds to the stored percentage, reducing the risk of spoilers even further.
Am doing two things:
Storing the user's input page number or timestamp and displaying that to any users who have the same edition marked.
For estimated page numbers/timestamps, ensuring that what's displayed is the maximum page number or timestamp that corresponds to the stored percentage, thus reducing risk of spoilers even further.
Hello!
A couple of things: Do you definitely have the correct edition marked on TSG? Also, whatever edition your friend has, the pages they see will be different. And, if their edition is different to yours, they will see a notice that says something like: "Warning, your edition is different to the person who wrote this comment, so pages will vary." This will warn the reader to exercise caution and leave a few pages of buffer.
Despite all this, the pages shown are meant to be an approximate guideline for the comment. When you input a page number, we don't store the page because people read different editions/switch editions, etc., so we store the percentage only and translate it back into a page number. Depending on how big a book is, given you can't have fractional pages, a particular percent can represent a range of pages.
To guard against spoilers, I did make it so that when you stored a buddy read comment, we calculated the percentage by rounding up, but that led to a weird quirk because now buddy read tracking behaved differently to the how general progress tracking works in the app: https://roadmap.thestorygraph.com/bugs/posts/buddy-read-comment-at-wrong-percentage.
This post has given me an idea though — what we could at least do is display the latest page any given percentage could possibly be, ensuring that the comment is definitely safe, providing each person is tracking against the correct edition!
Nadia we are reading the same edition and I just double checked that I have the right edition marked and do. I think your idea is a good way to mitigate the risk of seeing spoilers! I just didn't want a page number to be represented earlier than what it is inputted as, as then the buddy could open it and see spoilers
maddychance Okay, I'll look into doing that!