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Another annoyance - trashing users replies.

7up
Community Veteran
Posts: 15,856
Thanks: 1,603
Fixes: 18
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Another annoyance - trashing users replies.

@jaread83 & Lithium,

 

PLEASE can you get something done about completely losing peoples replies? - It's frustrating.

Today I went to reply to a topic on chit chat about locking ports. While slowly and quietly typing (so as not to wake my toddler) a mod has locked and moved the topic to the tech help forum. Thats fine.. but what isn't fine is that when I then click the post button, I'm greeted with a message that then tells me I can not post there as it is read only. Clicking the back button sees me with no text anywhere that i can copy / paste to the new topic that has been created in the correct forum.

WHY?

So this is what you need to do:

Save form submissions temporarily in the database BEFORE even looking for the topic and seeing if it can be replied to. If it can great, save the submission in that topic in the database. If not, your pre-save has kept the users text as a draft so they can still copy it without loosing it.

OR

When a topic needs moving, MOVE IT. Don't "close & clone" because posting to it still loses the text because the topic has been closed AFTER the poster his hit reply and been given a "reply" page and form. Instead, just reassign the forum number to the topic and then create a clone in the originals place in the original forum - and then CLOSE THAT instead.

It really isn't rocket science guys and there is no excuse for discarding peoples replies like this.

I need a new signature... i'm bored of the old one!
4 REPLIES 4
rongtw
Seasoned Hero
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Registered: ‎01-12-2010

Re: Another annoyance - trashing users replies.

its LITHIUM Lips_are_sealed

Asus ROG Hero Vii Z97 , Intel i5 4690k ,ROG Asus Strix 1070,
samsung 850evo 250gig , WD black 2 TB . Asus Phoebus sound ,
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jaread83
Hero
Posts: 3,438
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Registered: ‎22-02-2016

Re: Another annoyance - trashing users replies.

I can understand your frustrations and it would annoy me too if that happened while composing a reply. Unfortunately, this isn't something I am able to fix up as what it really (and I can't stress this enough) needs is for some kind of notification system in place that watches the thread you are replying to and will tell you if it has got moved, has a reply or whatever. That is a feature I would really like to see but I am unable to implement this.

Was the reply ever saved in your drafts?

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Another annoyance - trashing users replies.

For what's worth @7up I normally create my responses in TextEdit on my Mac, so if I have something that has a link in it I'll paste the link in to the text. Once I'm happy with the draft I'll copy and paste it in to the reply window then extract the link(s) and create the HTML entries for it. This way I'm not subject to any timeouts during composition and my actual edit time is kept to a minimum.

7up
Community Veteran
Posts: 15,856
Thanks: 1,603
Fixes: 18
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Another annoyance - trashing users replies.


@jaread83 wrote:

what it really (and I can't stress this enough) needs is for some kind of notification system in place that watches the thread you are replying to and will tell you if it has got moved, has a reply or whatever.

Was the reply ever saved in your drafts?


To be honest that while doable, is a bit of a pain synchronisation wise as you have to use ajax / websockets and make sure it works across all browsers. So the topic gets closed / cloned to a new forum, that still means you've got a wasted editing form. Like I said previously, the key here is how its processed at the back end on the server.

For examples sake lets pretend that in the database Chit chat is forum 1 and Tech help is forum 2.

If the topic starts off in chit chat (1) but is moved to tech support then the answer is simply to change the topics forum attribute to forum 2 and then the reply can just be appended to that topic. As it seems now, the original topic is closed and a new one created in the other forum (thus the topic has its own new Id number in the database) and thus it all goes pete tong. It really isn't that hard on the server side of things - convincing those lazy **** at lithium however is probably a lot harder to do.

The workaround here from your POV jaread would be to use javascript to copy the original post to the users cliipboard. This could be done on the error pages themselves with a link saying something like "To save your submitted post to your clipboard, click here". It would only need to be shown on the error pages and frankly wouldn't (imo) be that difficult - although you would need the server to echo it back into the error page html. That or you give the user a check box on each reply page so they can select to save it to the clipboard before submission. Both are perffectly workable scenarios.

As for my drafts, no it wasn't saved there.

I need a new signature... i'm bored of the old one!