[pescetom]

For about two days now there has been (at least erratically) difficulty in replying to a post on the forum.
When I have finished typing the reply and try to send, I get the "Server does not respond or Down for maintenance" page.
Yet I cam browse the thread and also make a new post (not a reply) with no problems.
mikeh seemed to encouncter similar difficulty in making a reply.

[pescetom]

This problem seemed to have disappeared but is now recurring.

Please could BBO acknowledge and inform?

[jillybean]

It only appears to be affecting some posters.

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2023-December-29, 14:47, said:

It only appears to be affecting some posters.

Perhaps, or perhaps many just fail to complain.
Has it not happened to you?
I certainly noticed an unusual lack of responses to recent threads, even given the moribund situation of this forum.

It shouldn't be hard to isolate because it never happened until my OP and the forum has been here for decades with no changes in recent years.

[sfi]

jillybean, on 2023-December-29, 14:47, said:

It only appears to be affecting some posters.

Yep - it works fine for me on all devices.

[pescetom]

sfi, on 2023-December-29, 15:05, said:

Yep - it works fine for me on all devices.

Weird.
It doesn't look device related, I had it both on PC with Windoze+Chrome and phone with Android+Samsung browser.
It seemed to disappear until two days ago but is now erratically back (this reply went well, but several this afternoon failed).

[jillybean]

I've been using my cheap motorola android and Chrome on my MAC with no problems.

[mycroft]

I had one reply go to "this page doesn't exist". Went back, thought the typing had gone; but a couple hours later I checked the tab and it was there, and it posted fine then.

[mycroft]

I had one reply go to "this page doesn't exist". Went back, thought the typing had gone; but a couple hours later I checked the tab and it was there, and it posted fine then.

[mycroft]

I had one message this morning go to "Something went wrong". Went back, thought I'd lost it; but checking the tab some hours later and the text was all there, and posted then.

Re-typing this one, as it *also* (along with several "my content" new tabs) went to 504 Bad Gateway, and then to "Something went wrong". 0020 Dec 30 Eastern Standard Time (of course, I'm in Central).

ETA: and - the other reply went (you can see the "dupes" above). That didn't happen with the first one (it was the big sprawling disclosure rant discussion in the 10-13 post). Not deleting the "dupes" for debugging purposes.

[diana_eva]

Hi,

We noticed something seems to be off, the empty posts and occasionaly error pages. One of our sysadmins is checking why.

Sorry for the slow response time, lots of people off these days.

[pescetom]

diana_eva, on 2023-December-30, 06:19, said:

Hi,

We noticed something seems to be off, the empty posts and occasionaly error pages. One of our sysadmins is checking why.

Sorry for the slow response time, lots of people off these days.

Thanks.

In the meantime, the bypass identified by mikeh is to type a one word reply to the thread and then edit that once it appears... not sure if it always works or if it really has to be one word, but it seems to deliver the eggs

[sfi]

sfi, on 2023-December-29, 15:05, said:

Yep - it works fine for me on all devices.

And now it's broken for me as well. I'm fairly certain nothing changed on my end...

EDIT: The post I made 10 minutes before this one hit the bug. This one went through fine, so I'm definitely not blaming my computer.

[pescetom]

helene_t, on 2024-January-05, 06:55, said:

Yome people have had this issue on and off over the last two weeks. I would say it has been going on for years but is probably worse lately.

Sometimes your post has actually been posted, though, even if you get the error message. This is one of the reasons why you sometimes see the same poster post the same post twice or thrice.

I suspect you are conflating at least two of three separate problems (as seen from user point of view):

1. inability to contact (or remain in contact with) the forum, leading to the "oops, something went wrong - may be down for maintenance" page.
This has been present for many years if not for ever

2. apparent lack of response when the 'Post' button is pressed once or more. You remain connected to the forum and your post will appear all the same, perhaps multiple times.
This has been present for at least two years now

3. disconnection from forum when the 'Post' button is pressed after writing a reply longer than mikeh's one word rule. You are no longer connected and your post is lost.
This is the problem this thread is about and only started in December 2023 AFAIK.

[jillybean]

Now I can't reply to posts

Something went wrong !

The server is currently unable to access the page you requested, due to temporary overloading or maintenance operations.

Is the message I get on my MAC
This post was submitted from my android

[smerriman]

Finally managed to replicate this, so did some quick debugging, and posts fail if they contain non-ISO-8859-1 characters. For example, submit a reply solely consisting of this one curly apostrophe character (which I'll need to edit in after posting this, so that my post itself works):

’

and you'll get the internal server error and it won't go through.

So it's an encoding issue. I'm guessing someone updated the PHP or database version recently, which was bound to break forum software this ancient.

Quote-replying to this post will, of course, fail too, so don't do that

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2024-January-12, 14:51, said:

Finally managed to replicate this, so did some quick debugging, and posts fail if they contain non-ISO-8859-1 characters. For example, submit a reply solely consisting of this one curly apostrophe character (which I'll need to edit in after posting this, so that my post itself works):

’

and you'll get the internal server error and it won't go through.

So it's an encoding issue. I'm guessing someone updated the PHP or database version recently, which was bound to break forum software this ancient.

Quote-replying to this post will, of course, fail too, so don't do that

You are of course right, I was able to reply directly to the previous post of jillybean but not to this post of yours (I had to use the mikeh bypass).

[mycroft]

I have been having repeated and consistent trouble posting my response to "Leading Partner's Bid" thread.

Looking at it, I see that I too fell into smerriman's trap - when I took out the accented word, it posted fine; when I edited to put it back in, that also worked. Thanks for catching that!

And yes, this is new - given where I live half the year, I frequently have written México or Canadá in the past, with no issues. (and I'm editing to add this paragraph, so I expect this to work too).

And yes, copy and paste that offending paragraph into the reply box and I get the dreaded error.

[jillybean]

I'm experiencing the problem frequently now, I'd say it has become endemic.

I wonder if the folk at BBO are back at work yet?

[barmar]

jillybean, on 2024-January-17, 16:00, said:

I'm experiencing the problem frequently now, I'd say it has become endemic.

I wonder if the folk at BBO are back at work yet?

We've taken note of this, but it's not clear why this has suddenly become a problem. We haven't made any changes to the forum recently.

And I'm sorry to say that forum issues are low on our priority list.