Let's get to the bottom of this "losing our posts" problem

We've had many members report that while making a post or a D-Mail message, what they were typing disappears.

I have never experienced this, so it's extremely difficult for me to figure out what might be causing it.

One thing I'm not clear on is exactly what happens when the post disappears. Does the page reload for you? Are you taken to a separate page? Has anyone ever taken a screenshot of the resultant page?

Dave

Floridian,

You mentioned that you lost a D-Mail in the morning of Sep 26th...

I checked the logs and it looks like you opened a D-Mail at 9:40am (UTC/GMT).

6 minutes later you loaded the DG homepage, then went to PlantFiles's search page. Then you searched for a plant and then viewed that plant's entry in PlantFiles.

The next page load I see is where you posted a Preview or Send in the original D-Mail at 9:55am.

Were you dealing with different windows, or tabs? The pattern doesn't indicate that all this happened in the same window.

Any details you have will be very helpful.

dave

Please check my logs too if you have a spare moment. I lost several posts this morning. First in a thread over in Plumerias. That one should be easy to check because I only posted once in that thread and it happened shortly before I was able to post. I ended up back at my DG home page. I'm pretty sure all I did that time was to depress the shift key in the lower left hand corner. And I am positive I didn't come any where close to touching the CTRL key.

Might you have hit the tab key at any time during your writing?

Anything is possible but I really don't think so. I've gotten to where I look at the keyboard now while I type as opposed to looking at the screen. In other words, I watch myself type out of fear of hitting one of those shortcuts Terry was mentioning.

I had this problem stopped for a while when I was typing what I wanted to post into a word doc then cutting and pasting it back into a post or a d-mail but then I reverted back to typing directly into a post or d-mail to try to watch what I might be doing to cause this.

This is happening in both IE7 and Mozilla for me but usually I am on IE7.

Hi Dave,

The DMail I lost was typed early, sometime between 5:30 - 6:30am and done at home. I didn't have time to retype it then

Access at 9:30 would have been from my work computer. At work we use IE6.

I often have several DG windows open at the same time as I bounce from thread to thread, forum to forum or type a DM.
Right now I have 2 DG windows open

Did I cover what you need?

Please excuse me if this has been mentioned before but this is something I've done that wipes out posts or D mails right away (even this morning grrr).

When finishing typing a D mail or a post; I hit the preview button.

I then see an error in spelling or wording and want to change it.

Unfortunately I click the spot I want to edit in the Preview Box instead of the lower box and this wipes everything out completely!

Maybe some members are doing this too?

Again if its already been mentioned just ignore my post,lol. :-)

Pellletory, I have done the same thing too, and it is frustrating but it is my fault, for not paying enough attention.

Betty, you mentioned in the previous thread that the text was all highlighted when you had this happen to you. If you're using Windows, the culprit could have been your inadvertently typing CTRL+A instead of SHIFT+A when meaning to type a capital A. Like you said, once everything's highlighted, anything you type will replace the highlighted portion. If you hit CTRL+A while in the message box, your entire post will be highlighted (the CTRL+A command selects all.

CTRL+Z, if hit several times, will back up several steps to restore a previous action. Sometimes, you might need to press it several times.

I think it's happened to me a couple of times today but I think it may be something I am doing wrong.

Here's where I was: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/775333/ and went to PF to look up the plant, selected the plant and copied .... went back to the thread to past it in my post and what I had begun to write was gone. The only thing on the thread was the original post by the person asking about the plant .... that was it. My first comment was missing and so was Rocco's.

I am wondering what I did. I tried the back button but never found my beginnings of a reply ... so went back to the home page, went to communities and the Plant ID forum and to this person's thread and retyped my message and pasted the link to PF.

Hope I'm not confusing matters trying to explain. I don't know what happened ... could very well be something I did wrong, it's happened a couple of times the past day or so. I also have had trouble sometimes the past couple of days with pasting a link. Yesterday I tried for hours to copy and paste a link into a thread and it just wouldn't work. Finally late afternoon it worked again.

Lin--I think you may be having a different problem, when you've started typing a reply and then you go to another page and then try to come back, a lot of times your text will be gone. This has been happening to people for a while and is not the same problem that others have been having recently. The problem you're having is because of how the browser works, nothing to do with DG. The best thing to do is open Plant Files in a separate window, that way you won't lose your post.

Thanks ecrane ... I have only been a member of DG for a year and I've been doing it the same way the entire year and it just started happening.

Thanks for the advice, maybe opening PF in another window will remedy the problem.

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong place.

I think if you start a reply, then go somewhere else, you will lose what you typed. I had that happen once when not paying attention to what I was doing.
If I need to go back or to another thread while replying, I minimize the first window & open a new one to navigate around. Never lose a post that way.
Bernie

That happens to me too. If I want to go somewhere else, I just right click on where I want to go and then click on open a new window or a new tab.

Dave, if it is any help, the 3 Dmail posts I had problems with were on Sept. 26 between about 5:54 and 6:08 pm PDT. They each involved a photo attachment and preview. I keep trying to remember exactly what I saw happen (maybe I need a hypnotist lol). I'm not sure the "your post has been submitted" page appeared, I don't think it did; maybe it went directly back to the dmail, I'm not sure. Anyway, the posts did not show up in the Dmail so I suspect the submit failed after hitting send. All 3 efforts to repost worked OK and appeared in the Dmail thread.

I'm not sure if this is going to be of any help or not....but I just had "the blue screen of death" show up while I was posting in another thread. After I coughed my tounge back up after swallowing it is frustration I just hit "enter" and it brought up my windows opening screen - I looked down at my keyboard and realized that I had hit "ctrl" and the windows key at the same time. I clicked on the programs running square on the screen and it took me right back to where I had been, complete with unfinished sentence on the message box. Could something similar be happening to the d-mails?

As I see it, there are only 2 possible explanations: operator error, which may involve numerous possibilities of misskeying; or.... a problem with the website. We are all vulnerable to misskeying. However, here we have a cluster of problems being reported, with respect to posts disappearing. Being a Linux user, I don't get the blue screen of death ever (that is so Windowish, lol). The worst that has ever happened to me is my vintage version of Firefox occassionally crashes, or so it seems. Most viruses are written to attack Windows systems so I doubt I have a virus. But... here we have a cluster of reports (including me) indicating a problem with submitting posts. And incidentally, I have never had this problem before. I eagerly look forward to Dave's investigation. I love a mystery!

Pardalinum--I think maybe you're having a different problem than the others. It sounds like your posts are disappearing somewhere in the preview/submit phase, whereas I think the original problem was that other people's are disappearing while they're still in the middle of typing them. Maybe I'm not understanding it right though.

No ecrane, you are correct. Posts are going "poof" in the middle of typing them. That's why this thread was started, to address "poof" posts.

How many who lose posts are using Firefox and how many are using IE? I've lost many fewer since I started using Firefox. I find it much more flexible. With IE, if I go back and open a picture, poof goes the partially completed message. Not so with Firefox. But I still, if I'm composing a LONG message with replies to many people, open WordPerfect in one window and DG in another and go back and forth. eliminates any confusion about DG windows - which one is active and it makes back-up copies every few minutes which will cover me, at least partially if I have a power failure.

Ann

Was my post to the flower pounding article removed for some strange reason, or did it just disappear? I was the first to post last night, and now I see there is a different thread there, and mine is gone.

OK. Thanks ecrane. I don't think I have lost any posts midstream but will be vigilant in case it happens....

KyWoods--are you positive that the thread went through? You're not the first person who thought they posted something but it actually never went through. That's a different problem than the one this thread is about, but it seems like a lot of people are also having that problem--maybe someone who's posts are disappearing sometime during the preview/submit process (as opposed to midway through typing it) should start a new thread for that issue.

Oh, my--never lost one midway thru typing it! Now that IS freaky! Thanks, ecrane!

I think sometimes people hit the tab key a few times, which takes them to the next series of text fields and buttons. Hitting tab three times, for instance, would take me to the preview button right now.

Is it possible I don't have trouble with losing posts because I am an old hunt & peck typist! LOL!

I saw this in an e-mail received today and just had to post it here. LOL

LOL That's cute!

How perfect is that?!!! Lol!!

I was composing a post and my fingers brushed the keys accidentally and *poof* my text vanished. I had both hands at the keyboard.

In trying to duplicate what I had done, I replaced my fingers as closely to the positions they were in when the "event" happened.

The combination of shift {left hand} + page up {right hand} highlighted all the text left of the cursor, which followed by pressing backspace key, deleted the text.

Since my cursor was at the end of the end of what I had typed, the whole thing vanished.

Hitting the backspace key works with the shift key still depressed or not.

My fingers had most likely pressed those keys as given while being "rested" on the keyboard and that was that.

R.

Oh yeah:

The screen "jumped" as others have noted.

R.

Did CTRL+Z undo the action?

Yes!

R.

Hey all!
When I write a very important or a very long post, I copy the text before clicking on anything else... Even "preview" can lose a post. Selecting text and copying is the best way not to lose a post. That happened a lot when I used IE. It would frustrate me so much, but I could only be frustrated with myself for forgetting to save the text.

Like Viola, After I signed in to Firefox I have not had any problems with losing posts at all. Their engine works best with DG, no doubt about it! I had been using IE for a bit bc I had to reload my whole computer from a crash a few months ago. Then I wised up. There was even an icon on DG page that said "Best when using Firefox". (:-)
Also even if I hit a wrong key, I can right click in the text box and click on "undo" and the text returns... :-).

debnes

I just tried the right-click, undo, and it worked with IE.

R.-

Periodically while composing posts, Windows users can hit CTRL+A to highlight the entire post in the message box then hit CTRL+C to copy the text to the clipboard. That way, if the worst happens and CTRL+Z won't bring it back, you can go back to the message box and hit CTRL+V to paste what you saved to your Windows clipboard.

There are quite a few of us who are pretty sure we're not accidentally hitting the wrong keys. We've tried CTRL + z and it didn't work.

Are we absolutely certain that we aren't facing cases of "computer revenge" here? I am positively sure mine has a personality and agenda of it's own and just loves to act up when it the least convenient for me (not that it is ever really convenient! I have this tendency to run around, foaming at the mouth, when I can't get my computer fix). As for why your computer may need revenge, I don't know. In fact I haven't figured out why mine needs revenge. Dotti

Which engine are you using Lauren?

debnes

IE7 but I actually use Mozilla a lot more and posts have gone poof when I've been using Mozilla. And, when other members who use Linux and a Mozilla browser stated they had issues with posts going poof, I went over to a friends house who has Linux and Mozilla and sure enough, a post in a d-mail went poof when I was using their computer.

Here's the old thread that resulted in this thread being started. There's something going on but what it is would be beyond me. And, I do not have a virus. Scans are run nightly and I had my computer professionally scanned because I was so frustrated over losing posts. This is obviously not affecting all users but it's affecting quite a few.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/769959/

It's gotten to the point that I watch the keyboard when typing as opposed to the monitor just to be sure I'm not at the root of this. I also hilight and save what I'm typing while typing so that when and if it goes poof, I'm not sitting here wanting to scream. This is not happening at other sites.

There are still others out there having the same problem but they're not posting to this thread any more because so many people with other types of problems have been posting here that they've unwatched the thread. Me, I have hope that somebody is going to figure out what's going on so I'm still watching these threads.