Edit Spam Excess

[Father Enoch]

If you've blocked someone, it's probably a reply to the thread by them.

I haven't blocked anyone, I almost wondered if they were blocking me, but I couldn't imagine why. Their comment appears now, so apparently they haven't.

[Cauthon]

I haven't blocked anyone, I almost wondered if they were blocking me, but I couldn't imagine why. I swear I've tried to be respectful and nothing but.

I don't think it works two ways, although I could be wrong.

[Heavy Arms]

It has nothing to do with blocking (it was my post and all).

I tried to get the edit-spam error to hit me, and I did! I'm testing a few things to see if I can help the mods narrow down the problem; esp. if it's a few posters that are getting it more than others.

The strange thing that came out of it was what Father Enoch noted: my "flagged as spam" edited post was hidden from view until a mod approved it.

But an interesting thing when I saw that the system still said I had the last post? I opened the forums in a different browser where I wasn't logged in, and I saw my pre-edit post at the end of the thread. I wasn't really expecting that, so I didn't document it, but that seems to be the root of what happened. I have no idea of this will help resolve the larger issue. It could be some other error in the spam-blocking function that I managed to get at the same time. But trouble shooting this sort of stuff can take awhile.

[Knightingale]

What I also tried after this happened to me was just make a new post in the same thread and after the first post had been flagged as spam after the edit, the new post also was immediately flagged as spam after that. So it isn't just the one post that gets flagged as spam but afterward, anything you post will automatically get flagged as spam as well.

Maybe we do a thread where we test this all out and go through what could be triggering the spam-filter (IP-address, what sort of edits are triggering it, time-interval between posting and edits... stuff like that).

[Heavy Arms]

AFAIK that's normal. If you have a post in a thread flagged as spam, the system stops you from posting more in that thread in general. That happened to me ages ago in an Exalted thread via normal "too many links" style stuff.

Though something I'm finding, is that this does seem to be time sensitive. I haven't been able to get this to happen for posts that are older. But I haven't tried to see if it's just editing too quickly, or if posting a second time and then going back and editing can get it to go off. A dedicated thread might be useful for reducing variables (and also not thread crapping older threads).

[Cauthon]

I just got flagged for deleting some excess spaces less than a minute after posting, but I've done quite a few edits in similar timeframes. Maybe it's what's being changed?

[Knightingale]

So I just had a new experience... I posted something on Feel Free To Vent with four links and the post immediately was flagged as "Unapproved". And unlike with the edit-thing, the post doesn't show up (since a mod has to approve the post first for it to become public, of course).

[Tamuz]

Hi
I have a topic in the mage the awakening forum creating legacies based on factions from mage the Ascension.

After adding a link to the first post it has become unnaproved.

I am not sure why

[TempleBuilder]

Hi
I have a topic in the mage the awakening forum creating legacies based on factions from mage the Ascension.

After adding a link to the first post it has become unnaproved.

I am not sure why

It’s a known issue that’s proving problematic to fix. It happens sometimes when you edit stuff. Adding links seems to make it worse. And it removes the thread if it was the first post. Same thing actually happened to KaiserAfini on your thread, as I recall. Only thing you can do now it wait for a Mod to fix it. Usually takes about a day or so.

[Second Chances]

Yeah, my booklist threads are still getting caught in it - which I'm not bothered by, they do have a million links in them.

[KaiserAfini]

Yep, also happened sometimes when I went to fix typos or delete an extra blank space, I have no idea how much triggers it. However, I have noticed a few additional details. Posts stuck in approval limbo still register as new additions to threads, allowing you to see who tried to post. If you try to go to the latest post, then rather than navigate you to the latest approved one, it retrieves the post in limbo as the latest, sees it doesn't have permission to be displayed and simply drops you at the top of the page.

In short, I think it might be a good idea to deal with the following edge cases:
1- If someone posted, but it was not approved, do not update the thread count and latest poster until after it been given the greenlight.
2- If the user pressed to button to go to a thread's latest post and it is not visible, call a function to find the most recent visible one and then navigate the viewer to it.

Hope that helps

[MarkK]

Do I need to repost it? Ask if I can repost it first? Etc?

[Heavy Arms]

If an edited post is showing up as green with the "unapproved" tag at the bottom, it just needs a mod to get around to it as soon as they can. Until we can figure out what's going on, it really just depends when you got hit with the bug, and when a mod has time to go through the lasted batch.

If you post isn't tagged as spam, but the new edit isn't showing either? I would PM a mod. It's possible the edit wasn't approved for a reason, by accident, or the forums just ate your post for some unrelated reason.

[Second Chances]

Yeah, same thing just happend when I caught a formatting change I wanted to make on a new post. Immediately got flagged as spam.

[Erinys]

I can edit some posts, but one of mine was flagged as spam after I edited it more than once. It has no links, and only one quote. Now that it's "spam" I can't edit it.

This is going to be a problem because I frequently edit my posts. It's just how I think and write, I can't really avoid it.
But hey, at least editing posts on the Exalted forum is possible at all!

My IP address is shared and changes every few days.