A bug in Brilliant's follow feature

Hello

I've been noticing this flaw in Brilliant's follow feature since about a month. Every person I follow doesn't show up in my in my 'following' list the next time I am here and I have to follow them again (I know there's an upper limit of 100 people that'd show up). I have followed many people more than 3 times now. E.g. I'm following Paramjit for the 3rd time I'm writing this note. It's time the brilliant technicians of Brilliant ought to do something about it.

#BugReport

Easy Math Editor

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Markdown	Appears as
`italics` or `_italics_`	italics
`bold` or `__bold__`	bold
- bulleted - list	bulleted list
1. numbered 2. list	numbered list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
paragraph 1 paragraph 2	paragraph 1 paragraph 2
`[example link](https://brilliant.org)`	example link
`> This is a quote`	This is a quote
# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"	# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `$` ... `$` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$

Comments

Strange, we haven't noticed anything like that before.

Can you respond to this comment the next time you notice that you aren't following Paramjit? It would be most helpful if you didn't re-follow him until I respond to your comment after looking into what is going on. I will keep track of the "Following" object in the database and see if anything happens to it.

Sam Solomon Staff - 7 years, 2 months ago

OK, I'll do as you say. But I didn't experience this problem only with him; there are others too. If this happens again with some other member I'm following, I'll immediately comment there.

Kou$htav Chakrabarty - 7 years, 2 months ago

Ah! Here it goes again. I'd followed Prasun Biswas before too, but now when I hover the mouse pointer over his name, I still see the 'follow' option rather than 'following'.

Kou$htav Chakrabarty - 7 years, 2 months ago

Thanks! I'll take a look tomorrow, please don't re-follow yet.

Sam Solomon Staff - 7 years, 2 months ago

Okay, I looked into it, we unfortunately have no record of you having followed that user before. This means there may have been an error when you followed that user or you may have thought you followed the user when you actually didn't go through with it.

If you would like to continue this investigation, you can help by keeping a list or document with who you are 100% sure you have followed (So after you follow them, go to their profile and make sure it says "✓Following" rather than "+ Follow".) and the date/time you followed them, and then let me know when one of those verified follow relationships disappears.

Also, if while verifying that you followed someone, if you get an error message or are sure that you clicked the "+ Follow" button but it shows that on their profile, you haven't yet followed them, let me know and I'll try to track down why the original request didn't go through (I would guess that this may end up getting to the bottom of why this is happening).

Sam Solomon Staff - 7 years, 2 months ago

@Sam Solomon – OK, I'll list down all the information as you asked for and keep you updated with them.

Thanks

Kou$htav Chakrabarty - 7 years, 2 months ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$