Vanishing posts

[ChrisC]

Once again I spent time crafting a reply to a post only for it just vanish. I didn’t multi quote or @ anyone and didn’t include any links in it either.

Sometimes they appear a few hours later after preseumably Rob or Rhys have looked at the moderation queue and released them

This is getting ridiculous. It was at least twice for me yesterday and again today

I’m not the only person this is happening to.

[Richie]

Most devices have a Notes app, consider drafting your reply there and then copying and pasting to HfP.
My guess Rhys is very busy today in NY and Rob is doing something with his family.

[ChrisC]

Shouldn’t have to do that though because a repost would just as likely vanish as well.

It’s been happening a lot recently and it’s not just affecting me.

it’s something to do with the site and they need to get a grip on it.

[Richie]

It’s unreasonable to expect 24/7 moderating for these forums.
The site has to be secure.
If there’s a problem, it’ll likely be resolved in time.
In the meantime, keep a note of your posts.

[ChrisC]

I never said I expected 24/7 moderation. Where did you get that notion from??

Yes the site should be secure but I posted comments with NO external links and NO quotes and NO tagging other people yet they still vanished.

I’m not the only person this is happening to. I’d tag Lady London for example but that would likely make this post vanish!

Did you write that post in notes then cut and paste it into here? I don’t think it is reasonable for anyone to have to repeatedly do that sort of thing.

[Richie]

I’ve had posts go into moderation, only to eventually turn up. It’s not a problem.

I ain’t as clever as others, which is why I can’t do excellent long detailed posts. If I was, I would do a draft in Notes.

[Jacob]

yep, had 2 posts yesterday like that as well…

The site can be secure without becoming unusable though. I think Rob mentioned in one of the other posts that they have introduced a list of words which trigger the post to go into moderation. Seems like we mentioned these words – probably the wrong way to go about preventing spam if it’s also preventing genuine posts.

[JDB]

Richie wrote:

I’ve had posts go into moderation, only to eventually turn up. It’s not a problem.

I ain’t as clever as others, which is why I can’t do excellent long detailed posts. If I was, I would do a draft in Notes.

Indeed. The HfP team should be entitled to weekends like most people without having to moderate dreary posts. Lots of useful/interesting ones are getting through. HfP recently suffered a bad spam attack and, for the benefit of all of us, have put sensible, proportionate measures in place to stem further such attacks. If anyone considers their post critical, yes, copy it somewhere first or better edit it for brevity and to remove obvious spammy words and it will post fine. This whingeing at the principals of this superb site about posts is both rude and unjustified.

[ChrisC]

That last comment is especially unjustified.

I’ve made no comment about Rob or Rhys.

I’m raising an issue that is affecting several posters commenting on posts but it also affects those people posting queries because they aren’t getting to see answers to their questions in good time.

Perhaps you’d feel differently if your dreary posts vanished for no apparent reason.

[JDB]

@ChrisC – HfP is a relatively small operation. Any repeated criticism of the site’s operation, particularly re a known issue is a direct criticism of the team and unwarranted.

Four recent posts by you :-

Today – “This is getting ridiculous” and “they need to get a grip on it”.

Yesterday – “this is getting riduclous with posts going into moderation or just vanishing” and “Oh for crying out loud another post just vanishes”

Please just give them a chance or edit your posts so they don’t fall foul of the filter.

[Rob]

All of the spam posts contained one of two particular words. Posts containing those words are being held for moderation.

One word is rare but annoyingly one is very common on this forum.

Once the spammer have given up – everything they have posted for the last 5 days or so has been blocked – and moved on, we will change the filter. What is frustrating is that the entire team was away last week which made moderation trickier.

[Lady London]

With respect, Richie I don’t think you’re getting the point.

ChrisC always makes positive contributions and many of these include sharing personal knowledge not many people have. Such as how quite a lot of things work inside airlines.

I would be very disappointed if ChrisC, for one, got discouraged over time with having taken the time to craft posts that just keep disappearing. Or if posts submitted get delayed so the post doesn’t come into the thread flow when it should. So the goodwill in wanting to give timely advice feels a bit wasted as the advice in the post appears late.

I also like to post while retaining the ability to scroll up and down the thread to make sure I correctly named the poster that made a particular comment, for example. It’s about responding. Having to do everything in Notes etc. preemptively does not have the same participative feeling.

What’s worse is this is Round 2 of posts disappearing, it got very frustrating on Round 1. Not sure if you were posting much during Round 1 Richie but unfortunately.a renewed occurrence of something which did begin to cause some frustration on the first round is going to frustrate people sooner on Round 2.

I don’t know what the answer is. The architecture of the forum feels like a plywood garden shed that does very well, until a new climate threat means it needs very heavy insulation the architecture can’t support. So maybe we need to take the opportunity to put some photovoltaic panels over the shed which would also form a roof. Worst case a garden wall (shell) around the garden shed as well?

[Richie]

The perfection some are expecting appears just not to be possible at weekends/ bank holidays, when moderators aren’t available.
It really is as simple as that.
A simple ‘I’ll reply on X day/ date with my contribution’ is all that’s needed.

[Lady London]

Richie wrote:

The perfection some are expecting appears just not to be possible at weekends/ bank holidays, when moderators aren’t available.
It really is as simple as that.
A simple ‘I’ll reply on X day/ date with my contribution’ is all that’s needed.

No you really have not got the point Richie. And btw it hasn’t been weekends particularly either.

[Mikeact]

Rob Burgess wrote:

All of the spam posts contained one of two particular words. Posts containing those words are being held for moderation.

One word is rare but annoyingly one is very common on this forum.

Once the spammer have given up – everything they have posted for the last 5 days or so has been blocked – and moved on, we will change the filter. What is frustrating is that the entire team was away last week which made moderation trickier.

So, share with us what this word/s are. It seemed to me that every post is moderated somehow prior to publication

[Peter K]

So, share with us what this word/s are. It seemed to me that every post is moderated somehow prior to publication

Trouble is, if Rob says what they are then the spammer will potentially see them, especially in this thread, and so the trouble will start again and new words will need to be banned.

[Rob]

The block will be removed asap.

Rhys and I have a rare day together in the office tomorrow so we will discuss. One idea is to offer give one added function – to delete any post or comment – to regular posters.

[davefl]

post-388129 just got eaten by the spam filter after I quoted multiple times in it. Better than the old setting which only allowed one quote but it’s still fallible.

[tiriavpo]

Part of the problem seems to be (for me anyway) that posts seem to disappear but I am not getting any sort of message to say they have gone to moderation so I don’t know whether it is moderation or it has just disappeared.

[Rob]

We do always fish stuff out of the filter. It’s not as if stuff disappears for ever!

Annoyingly (for the techies amongst us) the site is now running PHP 8.1 but the forum software has not yet been rewritten by the authors to reflect PHP 8.