Phantom messages

[Andrew Barton]

When I logged in just now, I was told 'you have 2 messages, 2 are new'.  Clicking on this takes me to a messages display, which doesn't show any messages.  Where did they go?

Andrew

[Valamir]

Scroll further down on this page to discover the answer. 

[lumpley]

Sometime in the spring everybody got two PMed porn spams. Clinton mass-deleted them, but for some people the "you have 2 new messages" notice remained. I'm not sure whether it'll go away with time, or what.

-Vincent
site technical admin

[Eero Tuovinen]

It's not going away, at least not without database manipulation. Whether you see the phantom messages is simply a function of whether you were here to check the messages in the interval between everybody receiving them and Clinton mass-deleting them. The mass-deletion didn't manipulate the new-message-counter or whatever, you see, and now there's no message to read to remove the notification. In other words: if you have phantom messages, at least you didn't see the dong, and if you saw the dong, then you don't have the phantoms. Such a heritage.