Forum Comments and Issues Repository

[majestic]

Okay, since this also produces errors:

And it also procudes a 403 Forbidden when using only a single break, not a new paragraph by using shift+enter, I'm assuming that we're running into a problem whenever the forum produces a paragraph element and at least one of them begins with an open parantheses, and one ends with a closed parantheses.

Because the request sent for the above text in the image is like <p>(okay so...</p><p>this is weird)</p>.

But only if in the proper order, because this works:

25 minutes ago, majestic said:

 (test)

is it maybe also the end)

(or only the beginning without one?

As does adding a space here, for some reason. Yay.

(

Edited December 26, 2022 by majestic

[majestic]

all hands to battle stations)

testing something
(this gives no error, right?
well, let's see.

Edited December 26, 2022 by majestic

[majestic]

@SChin I originally wanted to post this, but it also does not get through, and it's getting too late to play around and figure out what causes the issue. This post as written in the screenshot also causes the forum to spaz out.

 

[Sarex]

@SChin I caught it in the act. One other thing that happened as a precursor to swallowing a post is that I couldn't react to a post and got a 403 error when I tried to.

I do not see anything interesting in the POST and GET requests, but let me know and I can send them to you if you want.

There are also some cookie warnings in the console.

[majestic]

@SChinOne of the advantages of the current broken state of the forum is that it makes it possible to actually reproduce the 'post eating' behaviour fairly easily. Edit one of your posts, add one of the lines that are currently causing the 403 Forbidden error to appear, like so:

This will then give you the aforementioned error, like described on the prior page:

If you click "OK" you will notice that the button is stuck on "Saving..."

The edit post function throws back 403 Forbidden:

Now, if you want to post something, it accept the post as normal, but simply not add any reply, just the same way it happens when the forum randomly eats a post.

Press submit, nothing will show up. Reproducable like this on Edge and Firefox. Now, this isn's particularily surprising as people seem to have that issue without breaking a post on Safari by the looks of it - there were a number of reports that entire posts go missing and that one cannot react to content at all. The error message from reacting to content is "Something went wrong" which is the same exception (at least the same text, that is) thrown back form the second POST attempt on the screenshot: checking for new replies in the thread.

I'm going out on a limb and say this is exactly what's been causing the random post eating for posters here all the time, particularily when the posting in a thread generates a new thread. Something in the function that checks for new replies breaks, the post goes through but does not show up. Since that reply check is happening only periodically, it on and off happens randomly. What causes the issues I don't know, but it's probably also some sort of issue with checking the reply count or replies in a thread when the page changes.

Not necessarily only that as I've had posts eaten on new pages just as well. Either way, as long as the forum is broken like that, it might be possible to observe what makes posts disappear that apparently go through but then don't, and prevent it from happening in some way.

[Gorth]

Yeah, Safari (whether you like it or not) got hit hard a few days ago. Can't post, can't react, can't do basic moderator stuff (move, merge, split etc.)

At least FireFox just eats 50% of my posts and they are there if I refresh the page and click on new post again (showing the text that was supposed to go in the post inside the text box). Just hit submit again and second time it usually works without changing anything

Since I'm not using my work computer at the moment, can't say how it behaves in Edge

 

[rjshae]

I got in a weird state on this forum so that I couldn't even like a post or use the contact tool. It either told me I was blocked or the system was in a bad state. The only fix was to clear out my cookies for the last month.

[rjshae]

Okay now my posts are vanishing. I feel like I'm being covertly censored here.

[Hawke64]

I keep getting "The request is blocked" when I try to post on the "Computer and Console" forums. Not sure what causes the issue. Using Firefox 108.0.1 (64-bit), haven't tried other browsers or clearing the cookies.

Edited December 29, 2022 by Hawke64

[Bartimaeus]

8 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

I keep getting "The request is blocked" when I try to post on the "Computer and Console" forums. Not sure what causes the issue. Using Firefox 108.0.1 (64-bit), haven't tried other browsers or clearing the cookies.

@majestic identified one set of circumstances regarding parentheses that causes it to happen, but I had it happen with another post recently that didn't have any and couldn't figure out what was causing it, and it was too late at night to want to bother to diagnose it so I just deleted a big chunk of the post instead and it finally went through.

[majestic]

Yes, there are some other circumstances that can lead to the described issues. I've only run into it with parantheses. If anyone runs into the issue on a post without them, post a screenshot please, although I'm hoping someone will get around to fixing the issues soon. Problematic time for the posting function to break, this close to christmas.

Edited December 29, 2022 by majestic

[Hawke64]

I had double quotation marks, but cannot reproduce it.
"test"

Edited December 29, 2022 by Hawke64

[majestic]

@Fionavar @SChin, and whoever else it may concern.

On 12/29/2022 at 11:01 AM, Hawke64 said:

I had double quotation marks, but cannot reproduce it.
"test"

Yeah, no, it is reproducable, but it behaves so seemingly random that it is hard to figure out what the actual cause could be.

Certain sets of words in quotations, irrespective of which quotation marks are used (both regular quotation marks and apostrophes break it), cause the post function to go on the fritz, but even then not always, it also has something to do with the words following a quotation.

See, for instance, thanks to @Bartimaeus, this one does not go through:

However, this does:

My words were "complete stylistic clone of Dark" POST BREAKS HERE.

It is also possible to post this:

"1234 1234 123"
"robert downey junior"
"holy holy man"

But not this:

Which is apparently caused by beginning the quote with the word more and following it with a space: This one very reliably kills any and all posts it is put in, apparently irrespective of where it is placed in the text. So, yes, with more being a common keyword in command interpreters, this points more and more to overzealous input validation, or a security issue.

Edited December 31, 2022 by majestic

[Sarex]

The curse of Microsoft is what this is.

[Bartimaeus]

Simply typing...uh, quotations-period-space (the actual characters) just about literally anywhere in a post appears to make a post unpostable. I can insert those characters into any post of mine anywhere (with the exception of immediately before a line break, because said line break culls the space) and it stops working.

Truly, the most dastardly of characters. This was probably the cause of some of my other failed posts, since I do like them quotations-period-space combos. AP style quotations are trash.

Edit: It also happens with apostrophe-period-space combos.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Fionavar]

9 hours ago, majestic said:

@Fionavar @SChin, and whoever else it may concern.

Yeah, no, it is reproducable, but it behaves so seemingly random that it is hard to figure out what the actual cause could be.

Certain sets of words in quotations, irrespective of which quotation marks are used (both regular quotation marks and apostrophes break it), cause the post function to go on the fritz, but even then not always, it also has something to do with the words following a quotation.

See, for instance, thanks to @Bartimaeus, this one does not go through:

However, this does:

My words were "complete stylistic clone of Dark" POST BREAKS HERE.

It is also possible to post this:

"1234 1234 123"
"robert downey junior"
"holy holy man"

But not this:

Which is apparently caused by beginning the quote with the word more and following it with a space: This one very reliably kills any and all posts it is put in, apparently irrespective of where it is placed in the text. So, yes, with more being a common keyword in command interpreters, this points more and more to overzealous input validation, or a security issue.

Thanks, Majestic. I will pass this along.

[Gorth]

Meh, I just want to be able to use the forums on my phone again (it's completely broken)

[marelooke]

Still can't use the forum at all in Firefox, posts don't work, reactions don't work. (EDIT: still eats everything past the first paragraph in Chrome too. So entirely unusable, unfortunately)

Edited January 2, 2023 by marelooke

[LadyCrimson]

Just to repeat from the movie thread - maybe don't use Bolded text, either. Tried to bold movie tiles in a post via highlighting words and pressing the B button, wouldn't post/go through/forbidden. Removed all bold, went through. Tried to edit that post to add bold after the fact, and got the can't edit message etc.  Using Firefox.

Edit: Firefox 89.0. I do not allow perm. cookies, but per session ones - cookies are always cleared when I close browser, reboot pc, etc.

 

Edited January 4, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[LadyCrimson]

"Testing something multiple times"

Edit: - yeah, inconsistent. I thought maybe some of the site scripts I don't "allow" might be wonky too (like microsoft.com)  - manually allowing them initially seemed to change things for my last forum login session, bold suddenly worked, but then I exited the browser, relogged in, had those scripts not allowed again like my normal etc, but now everything works fine, including bold, quote marks, etc.  >.> 

Edited January 4, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[SChin]

Hey Y'all!

I hope you had a great holiday break and weren't testing this the whole time!  I had sent this thread to our web developer so he could see everything you've been doing and I've gotten confirmation from him that we should have a fix for the line break issue!  It is currently on our testing server and awaiting a push Live once we approve of all the other web changes that he has along with it.  I'm hoping we can have the update out sometime tomorrow or Friday at the latest.  Hopefully it will fix the issue so you can finally get some peace of mind with this particular issue  

Thanks again for all the testing and for bearing with us while the issue persisted.

[majestic]

Fingers crossed, then.

44 minutes ago, SChin said:

I hope you had a great holiday break and weren't testing this the whole time!

[Fionavar]

On 1/2/2023 at 6:27 AM, marelooke said:

Still can't use the forum at all in Firefox, posts don't work, reactions don't work. (EDIT: still eats everything past the first paragraph in Chrome too. So entirely unusable, unfortunately)

Thanks marelooke,

I will also pass this along to @The Guildmaster to make sure they are not sleeping on the job

[Gorth]

I don't know if anyone tweaked any settings yesterday (Australian time), but I was able to submit a post from my phone. First time in many days that was possible

[bugarup]

Testing with 'murican VPN