For about the last half hour I've been tracking down a bug in the posting system. If you were trying to post during that time you might have encountered some error messages. Probably your posts went through anyway. Things are now back to "normal". Sorry for any inconvenience.
Here's my theory on what happened with Tom's disappearing comment post:
I think both Tom and Wheel clicked [add a comment] on my post at about the same time. Since there was not yet a comment on the post, no comment page existed at that point. For both of them the initial post script checked for the page, and finding none set the variable did (Directory ID) to null. Then Wheel wrote his post and clicked submit. The post processing script sees that $did=null so it makes the page, grabs the $did of the newly created page and uses that value to attach the comment to the correct page. Some time later Tom submitted his post, again with $did=null, only by this time the page really does exist and does have a $did. So Toms comment was added, just not to the right page.
This never used to happen becasue the comment pages existed whether there were any comments or not. I changed that around in this system because it seemed like a horrible waste of space. But now we have this problem. I can fix it by having a secondary check in the post processing script so that when $did=null we will not necessarily believe this, but check again after the post is submitted.
O.K., that wasn't so hard (assuming my theory was correct.) We should now be safe against this sort of thing. Still, I might be wrong. Please report any suspicious behavior involving lost posts. Probably the post is not really lost, and I can retrieve it for you - plus this will help ensure that these problems are discovered and squashed.
Wheel's post was already online at the time I clicked "post." I had a choice of whether to add my comment to his post or yours and I chose yours. I don't know if this information changes your theory. Did wheel edit his own post at the time I was writing mine?
Not sure, but I suspect Wheel doesn't do too much editing ;-)
Still, I hope so, or else I have no idea how this could have happened. It was definitely repeatable, although only for that page. Now with my slight fix I cannot reproduce this error. Please, if anyone else has this happen let me know right away! I need another example in order to figure out what is going on.
did no editing
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- jim 5-18-2001 6:21 pm
Here's my theory on what happened with Tom's disappearing comment post:
I think both Tom and Wheel clicked [add a comment] on my post at about the same time. Since there was not yet a comment on the post, no comment page existed at that point. For both of them the initial post script checked for the page, and finding none set the variable did (Directory ID) to null. Then Wheel wrote his post and clicked submit. The post processing script sees that $did=null so it makes the page, grabs the $did of the newly created page and uses that value to attach the comment to the correct page. Some time later Tom submitted his post, again with $did=null, only by this time the page really does exist and does have a $did. So Toms comment was added, just not to the right page.
This never used to happen becasue the comment pages existed whether there were any comments or not. I changed that around in this system because it seemed like a horrible waste of space. But now we have this problem. I can fix it by having a secondary check in the post processing script so that when $did=null we will not necessarily believe this, but check again after the post is submitted.
- jim 5-18-2001 6:32 pm [add a comment]
O.K., that wasn't so hard (assuming my theory was correct.) We should now be safe against this sort of thing. Still, I might be wrong. Please report any suspicious behavior involving lost posts. Probably the post is not really lost, and I can retrieve it for you - plus this will help ensure that these problems are discovered and squashed.
- jim 5-18-2001 9:37 pm [add a comment]
Wheel's post was already online at the time I clicked "post." I had a choice of whether to add my comment to his post or yours and I chose yours. I don't know if this information changes your theory. Did wheel edit his own post at the time I was writing mine?
- tom moody 5-18-2001 9:43 pm [add a comment]
Not sure, but I suspect Wheel doesn't do too much editing ;-)
Still, I hope so, or else I have no idea how this could have happened. It was definitely repeatable, although only for that page. Now with my slight fix I cannot reproduce this error. Please, if anyone else has this happen let me know right away! I need another example in order to figure out what is going on.
- jim 5-18-2001 9:50 pm [add a comment]
did no editing
- Skinny 5-19-2001 12:18 am [add a comment]
I made a post toward the start of the core post at the same time as weels, mine didnt take but weels did. but may be I hit post now instead of post. Hope that helps, ha
- bill 5-19-2001 2:35 am [add a comment]
all this points to the higher power aok'ing Core as the name
- Skinny 5-19-2001 6:33 am [add a comment]