This has happened to me a number of times recently. I reply to a post, nothing untoward seems to happen and yet I find that when I come back to inspect said post, all trace of it has disappeared! Am I the only one or is this a common occurence on this board?! Or will this post also disappear?! BTW - I'm aware that when lots of people are posting at the same time there is a prompt mechanism for post updates.
Disappearing Posts
- Thread starter ReallyRong
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This has been happening a lot lately. One thread that I started, tried to make me enter a password afterwards to read it. I e-mailed 2 mods about it, and no answer yet. Either they're ignoring me, or they don't care, or didn't get the e-mail.
1. You can find a list of your last 500 posts or the last 500 of any member by clicking the hypertext link that's the user name on any post, or by using your own link to your last 500 posts in your CP.
2. Frequently users think they've Posted when they've written a reply and clicked Preview; they "see" the preview and forget that they still need to hit Post.
3. If you PM me or Mac about the "missing" posts we can likely help you, but please check your post history first.
2. Frequently users think they've Posted when they've written a reply and clicked Preview; they "see" the preview and forget that they still need to hit Post.
3. If you PM me or Mac about the "missing" posts we can likely help you, but please check your post history first.
I deleted a whole lot of my posts once. That made them disappear pretty good. 
(also, sometimes posts get moved to landfill if they're off-topic in an active thread)
(also, sometimes posts get moved to landfill if they're off-topic in an active thread)
Also, if you happen to post at the 'zact same second a thread gets moved or merged, your post can be eaten by the aetherbunny. It'll even show as the most recent post, but there's nothing there.... *spooky sound effect*
I deleted a whole lot of my posts once. That made them disappear pretty good.
(also, sometimes posts get moved to landfill if they're off-topic in an active thread)
In both cases though, if they're in the first 500 they are still going to be listed with unique identifying numbers.
It happens to me occasionally, but its a router problem. I think it got dropped, cause its always flipping me and changing my IP.
Do you have a router? because if you have one and a whole lot of posts are missing it might be that.
TOO MUCH SUGAR TODAY!!!
Do you have a router? because if you have one and a whole lot of posts are missing it might be that.
TOO MUCH SUGAR TODAY!!!
I take exception to this post, the last part anyway. There isn't a single mod here who would "ignore" your concerns, or any who "don't care" about problems members encounter.
That's a low blow you've offered; and I'd venture to guess you have no idea what you're talking about, and even less knowledge of the dedication mods aspire to help run this site as seamlessly as possible.
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On a practical note, I always hit Ctrl-A then Ctrl-C before I preview or submit, so the text in the message editor window is copied to the clipboard. If anything evil happens, e.g. ISP blips, network time-outs, board hiccups, etc. I can always use Ctrl-V to paste the text back into the message editor window.
-Derek
-Derek
I totally read this as Invisible Pants and thought, "Ray has invisible pants in addition to chocolate pants now? Why is that a FAQ?"
No, I've never had an issue with posts disappearing and mods have always responded promptly to me.
No, I've never had an issue with posts disappearing and mods have always responded promptly to me.
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I have to agree with you SK ....... I've had stuff happen and Mods have handled it quite quickly.
May I take this opportunity to say that I love, admire and fear mods in equal measure! I'm using wifi so I may have something dodgy happening at my end, and in the meantime I'll take DPatterson's advice and copy stuff before I post whilst I figure it out. It is a bit weird though - last week I was getting a message saying that my posts were too short and had to be a minimum of one character long when they were actually, erm, fairly volumnous. I decided to take that as a hint that maybe I should apply a bit of editing to my own stuff.....
That's typically caused by inadvertently going back to the the Edit / Post screen where you have the quoted text or a blank post form; the javascript that activates when you click the Quote or Reply buttons is re-launched when that screen re-loads.
There are also often double posts from essentially the same sort of navigational error.
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I have this awful habit of taking a wrong turn with the mouse and clicking the [Forum jump] Go button before I hit "Post". (I make air-backup copies of my posts a lot too, for that and all the other good reasons.) Other than that, I can't say for sure that any of mine have been eaten. I have seen Very Strange Things happen elsewhere...
I just want to make sure everyone is aware that I'm not pointing out that these sorts of problems never occur on a Mac.
Because I'm better than that.
[cough]
Because I'm better than that.
[cough]
I got that message once, but it was because the cat was trying to post while I was away getting a cuppa. She thinks that my laptop is a butt warmer designed just for her.
Okay, I think I'm taking the first step of a possibly long journey. I'm pretty certain that I'm hitting the right buttons and I have no problems when I enter a fairly quick response like this one. The problems occur if I'm trying to crit someone, and am posting maybe half an hour or so after I originally started, stopped and re-started. Is there some sort of timeout going on at the AW end where the software logic decides that, despite me having gone off to have a shower in the meantime, I'm just not fresh enough?
Yes; there's a timeout on the server. It's set for longer than that though.
I'd try doing as dpaterson suggests and copying your post before clicking the Post button, or composing a response offline.
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Every message board I've visited over the years has this potential time-out problem, not just AW. If I'm writing longer replies, e.g. critiques that take more than a couple of minutes, I copy/paste the text I'm reading into Notepad, insert my comments there, then copy/paste back into a fresh editor window. And then I'll still use Ctrl-A (select all) and Ctrl-C (copy to clipboard) just to be sure.
-Derek
I sometimes do something similar, if I've got a long post that I've spend more than a minute or two writing (generally a reply to a serious writing question), I'll highlight the text, right click, and copy it. I don't usual paste it anywhere, but the copy will still be in my clipboard. It's really irritating to spend ten or fifteen minutes replying to something only to lose what you've written. I've been known to use a little foul language at that point. ;-)
And it's not always the forum's fault. I have one of those fancy-smancy mouses with more than the usual number of buttons. Heaven help me if I write a long, serious post and then accidentally hit the wrong button. Bye-bye reply, usually.
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