Missing Posts

[Admin]

Hi guys,

I have just noticed that 300 posts or so have been spammed over a long period. Some of you have been complaining about losing posts lately and I have just found them in spam. Upon investigation, I think I have found the cause.

I am pretty sure that this spam is happening because some people are posting the same post multiple times. I understand this is unintentional as I suspect users are hitting their back button to go back into edit mode in a post when they want to change something.

This is a mistake, because once you post and then hit the back button, edit, then post again, it is now a second post, and the spam filter sees it as obvious spam.

Instead, feel free to make your post, then if you see a mistake, click the ‘EDIT’ link above the post, and now you can make your edits without making a new post.

And remember, the EDIT link disappears after 20 minutes, so people cannot change their posts much later on if they have been refuted in a debate for example. I think 20 minutes is enough time if you wish to edit a post. I can increase this time if people really want that.

Thanks guys.

[Proclaimer]

@Jodi

I noticed many posts by yourself that have been flagged as spam.

Could it be that you are hitting the back button when editing posts?

If so, you need to click the edit link instead.

Hitting the back button is like posting again and the spam filters stop posts that are the same from flooding the board.

[Admin]

@edj @Lightenup @Jodi

I noticed heaps of posts in spam from you guys and they are repeat posts.

Are you guys hitting the back button instead of clicking the Edit link?

Remember, the Edit link remains for 1 hour before it disappears, so that is plenty of time to get the post looking right.

I would like to understand how this is happening to you guys.

Perhaps you could enlighten me to help me fix this if it is a site issue rather than a user thing.

See screenshot below:

[Ed J]

Hi T8,

I noticed that when the post is almost right, and I make
a lot of very minor changes is when the post just disappears.
I then make a new post, and edit the latest copy of the old post.

And walla the post is finally made… I learn how to make do

____________
God bless
Ed J

[Admin]

Thanks Ed J.

[Jodi]

Thanks for checking in on this!

I always click on the edit, make my edit and then click submit. I actually have never hit the back button before to try and edit. Sometimes I see that the post has been deleted after I attempted to edit it. Even weirder is that when I am viewing the different threads it says I was the last person to post, but when I go into that thread such is not actually true. As said earlier if I go to submit the same post again it says it’s a duplicate. So I’ve realized if I change it just a bit, it will be submitted. So I guess like Ed J said, I’ve learned to make do!

[Lightenup]

@t8

Sometimes I write a post but it doesn’t show up on the topic but it usually does in my profile area. Then I try a “Test” post and that shows up. I edit that and paste my post in there and it shows up. It seems to happen when a new page is beginning. It’s been making me cray cray, haha. Thanks for addressing this and thanks for all you do to keep us moving along!

LU

[Jodi]

Yes Lightenup I see that too. Sometimes when I post and I click the submit box it takes me to a new page that has no posts, just the text box to make a post. When I go to the page before that, my post is not there either.

[Admin]

What I believe is going on there is the post if published would have started a new page but it either fails to post for whatever reason whether that is a glitch in your connection or the website server, or it got spammed.

[Admin]

I believe this has happened because topics that have spammed posts put the page count out of whack. That is, they count toward the number of posts, and thus the next page gets triggered early.

In one topic, I moved all spam to trash thinking this might trigger a recount, but that didn’t work.

I still have the option of unspamming these posts and then deleting duplicate posts. This will probably fix the page numbering.

In case you are interested, I do have tools that recount all forums, topics, posts, and other stats. But it can only be applied to the whole forum at once. Because the forum has close to half a million posts, it actually crashes the whole server and leaves the website in an incomplete state.

[Author]

Posts