• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Consistently wrong since 2002

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Good lord, these people are nuts.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Open Threads / Site Issues Update: Major Change – Starting with a Clean Slate on Issues

Site Issues Update: Major Change – Starting with a Clean Slate on Issues

by WaterGirl|  December 20, 201911:28 am| 181 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

FacebookTweetEmail

I am writing this morning with a quick update on the site issues we have been experiencing.  There are more details to share, but the site has been a source of frustration these past few days, so it’s important to get this information in your hands right away.

The Balloon Juice crashes over the past few weeks have mostly been the result of space issues on the server.   At 9:45 ET this morning, the Balloon Juice website was successfully moved from a 20 GB space to a 100 GB space.

So regardless of how the site behaved yesterday or last week, as of this moment we need to start with a clean slate in terms of how the site behaves.

Now is when we will truly get to see which issues were caused by the space issue – or were exacerbated by the space issue – and which are bugs or cache issues that still need to be resolved.  So if you experience a problem, please let us know ASAP, even if it is something you have brought to my attention before.

To clarify, if a single comment is eaten, or disappears for no reason, we want to know about it. Every time. If you post a comment and sometimes the edit box isn’t there, please tell us about that only once.

Feel free to note any issues in the comments of this thread – issues that are new, or issues that you were experiencing before but aren’t anymore.  That may go a long way to giving us a quick sense of where things stand.  As always, it will be a big help if you use the Site Feedback form or follow up with an email to WaterGirl.

If you caught the “error establishing database connection” error this morning, that was because the database was in the process of being moved from one location to another, which happened at 9:35 ET. The move should have happened within the scheduled midnight to 6 am window as planned, but it did not.

One final editorial note: John cares, I care, the developers care.  We are going to get this right.

Edit at 2:00 pm

The developers have added a new line in the Leave a Comment area. It’s a short-term workaround to the remaining cache issue, but it should work like a charm in the meantime.

If you don’t see both the Visual and the Text tab on the editor, click here to refresh.

If you look carefully, you’ll see that line in the image below.

Site Issues Update: Major Change – Starting with a Clean Slate on Issues

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Plan domination in the CSR-94 variants
Next Post: Friday Afternoon Open Thread »

Reader Interactions

181Comments

  1. 1.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:34 am

    The usual – comment box opens in text mode sans tabs. Dell laptop win10 chrome .

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 11:36 am

    Thank you for continually running the Red Queen’s Race on our behalf.

    Is moving the server to a bigger space a stop-gap measure? In other words, is the extra 80 GB of space going to buy six months or whatever of time to troubleshoot, or is it more that 15 years of posts and comments is pushing the 20 GB, and pushing that out to 75 years worth of space seems like Good Enough?

  3. 3.

    Baud

    December 20, 2019 at 11:36 am

    Once this morning, my comment was cached, but otherwise I haven’t had that problem since last night.

  4. 4.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:36 am

    Tabs are there, now, and edit box is working well.

    ETA comments are showing up with no problems.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    December 20, 2019 at 11:36 am

    @Baud:

    And what do you know, it just happened again.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    December 20, 2019 at 11:37 am

    @Baud: No edit box on Comment 3.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 11:37 am

    One glitch, repeating what Jeffreyw notes on comment 1: First edit box was text-only, without the tabs to switch modes. Second comment (this one) has both Visual and Text modes. OS X Catalina, Safari.

  8. 8.

    Mo' Salad (--bd)

    December 20, 2019 at 11:38 am

    Please tell me that’s just the RAM you are referring to and that the actual storage is more in the multiple of TBs. I’d hate to think that my phone has almost as much memory as this entire operation.

  9. 9.

    Yutsano

    December 20, 2019 at 11:38 am

    It’s really hard for me to say what is a “bug” vs what is just because my work browser is so primitive. I’m on IE11 on Windows 7. I would feel really weird reporting happenings since it could be the site or just my browser isn’t totally compatible.

    EDIT: but this comment showed up right away. WOOT!

  10. 10.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:40 am

    @jeffreyw: setting up a reply to see how that acts.  Both tabs are visible in the reply box.

    ETA my reply appeared quickly.

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 11:42 am

    Reloaded the page. Edit box is back to text-only. Let’s see what happens when I post the comment.

    Edit: Comment posted fine. Edit-comment box has both Visual and Text tabs, new comment box also has both tabs.

    Edit2: Went back to home page, opened this thread again. Both Edit and New comment boxes have both tabs. After posting this, I’m going to let things sit for several minutes and reload after the 5 minute timer expires to see what happens then.

  12. 12.

    WhatsMyNym

    December 20, 2019 at 11:44 am

    No tabs on comment box, WYSIWYG mode only. Firefox on Android.

    ETA:  tabs are now shown.

  13. 13.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:44 am

    @jeffreyw: Making a reply to my reply to check on back arrow issues.  Box tabs visible in reply box.  So far, so good.

  14. 14.

    eclare

    December 20, 2019 at 11:45 am

    When I refresh a post, the refresh takes me upthread by about twenty comments.  Always about twenty.  Then I have to scroll down to get new comments, which is very annoying.

    Samsung S10e, whatever browser came with the phone.

  15. 15.

    zhena gogolia

    December 20, 2019 at 11:45 am

    No text tab. We’ll see if my comment posts or if I have to hard refresh in order to see it.

  16. 16.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:45 am

    @jeffreyw: Two back arrow jumps and I am back to where I started.  Yay

  17. 17.

    zhena gogolia

    December 20, 2019 at 11:46 am

    That comment posted, and on this one I have both Visual and Text. Chrome on Mac desktop (normally I’d be on a Mac laptop, though, but I haven’t noticed a big difference).

  18. 18.

    zhena gogolia

    December 20, 2019 at 11:47 am

    Second comment also posted right away, and I still have both Visual and Text.

    Попробую писать по-русски

    (Translation: I’ll try to write in Russian)

    Magenta!

  19. 19.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:47 am

    @jeffreyw: A refresh and I’m back to where I was without a problem.

  20. 20.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 11:48 am

    Edit box is text-only right now.

  21. 21.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 11:49 am

    Edit box back to normal.

  22. 22.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:50 am

    My #19 post needed a refresh.  I was sent to the top when I pushed the post comment button.  First glitch for me on the the thread ?

    ETA this comment worked fine, it posted fast and I was returned to the correct spot.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 11:50 am

    @dmsilev: Good question.  Our comment database with 5.5 million comments, is 6GB.

    The index, when the index included comments as well as posts, was 12 GB.

    Together those came to 18 GB.  18 GB in a 20 GB space is not good, so that left not enough space for the system itself, and that’s when things would get wonky, and progressively wonkier, until the site would crash.

    So 100 GB gives us plenty of space for now, and for the future.  Though perhaps not into perpetuity!

  24. 24.

    Steeplejack

    December 20, 2019 at 11:51 am

    @Mo’ Salad (–bd):
    Your phone has 100 GB of storage?! C’mon, man.

  25. 25.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 11:51 am

    Neither of the comments I just made appears to be editable. iPad on Safari.

    ETA: Added— Now all comments appear editable.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 11:52 am

    @Baud: If that happened before 9:35 eastern time, that’s in the past. :-)  If you think i happened at 9:45 or later, then I definitely want to know that.  thanks.

  27. 27.

    Steeplejack

    December 20, 2019 at 11:52 am

    @WaterGirl:

    The comment I just entered got the “generic” comment box—no Visual/Text tabs. Now this comment box has the tabs. (Win10, Firefox.)

  28. 28.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 11:53 am

    @WaterGirl: Are the drives in the server solid state?

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 11:53 am

    @Mo’ Salad (–bd): This is a virtual machine, so it’s a different world than the space you have on your phone.

  30. 30.

    Scout211

    December 20, 2019 at 11:55 am

    Comment box shows in text only. IPadOS 13

    Will try to post this comment to see if it fixes the V/T glitch.

    Edit:  now comment box shows both V and T mode and edit function is working.

    Second edit: fixed typo. Was able to edit twice.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 11:56 am

    @Yutsano: That’s a good point.  I am quickly coming to the conclusion that all browsers are the devil, though some are more devilish than others.

    I honestly don’t know how anyone can program something that works on 100 different hardware platforms, with 2 dozen browsers, and a million different settings in each browser.

    RE: your specific question, we guaranteed from the outset that the site would function on IE, but could not guarantee that everything would work properly.  So for Internet Explorer, you are kind of on your own if everything doesn’t work exactly right.

    But that doesn’t mean that we don’t love you. :-)

  32. 32.

    A Ghost To Most

    December 20, 2019 at 11:57 am

    I am still around, if you need another knowledgeable head to bounce database issues off. Otherwise, good luck.

    Adios.

  33. 33.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 20, 2019 at 11:58 am

    Shorter WaterGirl: We’ve changed one particularly annoying variable. Let’s see how this baby behaves now.

  34. 34.

    Scout211

    December 20, 2019 at 12:01 pm

    Left site and returned. Comment box reverted back to text mode only. iPadOS 13.

    Edit:  Now comment box shows both visual and text mode and edit function still working.

    Posting a comment still seems to fix the V/T glitch, but only temporarily.

    Second edit:  chrome

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:02 pm

    @eclare:

    Just a reminder that in this new world with more than enough server space, I sort of don’t care at all what happened yesterday, or even this morning before 9:35 Eastern time. :-)

    Is what you are describing true in this particular thread?  Or are you speaking more generally?

    If it’s not happening in this thread, where there are no embedded tweets, that’s one thing.  That kind of thing WILL happen in threads with embedded tweets – because tweets fill in later than the rest of the page.

    To be clear, the BJ site should line you up properly, but then you will move when there are embedded tweets filling in late.  So if you’re not lining up properly in this thread, that’s something for us to fix.  If you’re not lining up properly in a thread with embedded tweets in the post or in the comments, then that’s the price we pay for all the embedded tweets.

    To be clear, I mean the fully formatted embedded tweets that front pagers can do, not the pared down version that regular commentators put in.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:04 pm

    @jeffreyw: Is it possible that you start to move your mouse or use your trackpad before the page has finished fully loading? That CAN be an issue because it can interfere with the reloading of the page.

    If you tell me that you are NOT doing that, I will completely believe you.

  37. 37.

    Kayla Rudbek

    December 20, 2019 at 12:04 pm

    I have had trouble in the last few days with my comments seeming to not post, and then showing up after I refresh the page or go to another page and then back. Sometimes it seems to take more than one refresh. Running in Safari on an iPhone.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:06 pm

    @jeffreyw: I do not actually know that, but I can find out.

    What we have is a virtual machine – we don’t have a physical piece of hardware that is all our own.

  39. 39.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:09 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: I can’t tell whether you’re mocking me or not!

    One slight correction to what you’ve said… I would consider the not enough system space issue to be a catastrophic problem, rather than just an annoying one.

    We’ve all heard “when mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”.  Well the same can be said of system space.  If the system ain’t happy, ain’t nothing happy.  So I consider this to be a new world. YMMV.

  40. 40.

    eclare

    December 20, 2019 at 12:10 pm

    @WaterGirl: It def happened after 9:30, but seems to be working now.  So any post with embedded tweets is going to take me upthread when I refresh?

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:11 pm

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    I have had trouble in the last few days with my comments seeming to not post, and then showing up after I refresh the page or go to another page and then back. Sometimes it seems to take more than one refresh. Running in Safari on an iPhone.

    I’m sure that was frustrating!  I mean this in the nicest possible way, so please don’t take offense.

    That was before we had enough space.  The picture of where things stand right now will be much clearer if we only look at what happens after 9:45 ET this morning.

  42. 42.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 12:11 pm

    @WaterGirl: I’m back on my win 10 chrome desktop. No idea if I am moving the mouse while the page reloads but I can try to pay attention going forward. Using a trackball so probably not.

  43. 43.

    chris

    December 20, 2019 at 12:12 pm

    (Hmm, Text only comment box)
    Testing: Dogs are good for you

    ETA: Holy toads, it works! And the V/T tabs are back

    ETA2: Posted on first click. Edit posted on first click. Me happy.

  44. 44.

    trollhattan

    December 20, 2019 at 12:14 pm

    Let’s just see how our new, ginormous townhouse is working out.

    Let me quote something here.

     
    Displayed as soon as I posted, stayed on the bottom of the thread, edit option available. Win 10, Chrome.

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:14 pm

    @eclare: Pretty much.  In a thread with a lot of tweets, you might want to glance at the comment number before you post a comment.  Then, if you’re 20 comments up, you can just use FIND with the comment number and it will take you right to the comment you were on.

    We have the period after the comment number, otherwise doing a find on “10: would take you to every date/time stamp on the face of the earth. (slight exaggeration)  but “10.” takes you only to comment #10.

    I do not know how to do FIND on a phone or a tablet, so if someone knows how to do that, please chime in!

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:15 pm

    @trollhattan:

    Let’s just see how our new, ginormous townhouse is working out.

    Is there an echo? :-)

  47. 47.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 12:15 pm

    @WaterGirl: Probably no solid state drives, too pricey, still.

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:15 pm

    @jeffreyw: Trackballs, too.  Let me know what you notice.

  49. 49.

    zhena gogolia

    December 20, 2019 at 12:17 pm

    Now I only have the visual, no text tab.
    Золотистого меда струя из бутылки текла
    Так тягуче и долго, что молвить хозяйка успела:

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    December 20, 2019 at 12:17 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    Is there an echo? :-)

    There wouldn’t be, if only the nihilists hadn’t peed on the rug.

  51. 51.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 12:19 pm

    @WaterGirl: So far a couple of comments post glitch and everything seems great.

    ETA, I am noticing that on a post comment the site reloads and I am taken to the top for a heartbeat, then the page jumps down to the correct spot.  At least on this thread.  The behavior with embedded tweets is a whole other matter.

  52. 52.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:19 pm

    There seems to be a pattern, though there seem to be some exceptions.

    With the help of Scout and a few others who have been testing, it appears that, ONCE YOU GET TEXT MODE WITH NO TABS:

    – refresh does not help  (you still get text mode with no tabs)

    – replying to a comment does not help  (you still get text mode with no tabs)

    – posting a brand-new comment from the comment box at the bottom DOES get you visual mode with the tabs back

    If you guys want to test that and share your results, please be sure to list your device and browser combination.

    Sadly, there is no discernible pattern yet to tells us when/why you get the TEXT mode with no tabs.  If anyone can discern a pattern re: what sends you into TEXT mode with no tabs, I will personally send you chocolate.

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:21 pm

    @jeffreyw: Are you referring to your glitch at comment #1?

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:23 pm

    Leaving for about 25 minutes, will check back as soon as I return.

  55. 55.

    BruceFromOhio

    December 20, 2019 at 12:25 pm

    One final editorial note: John cares, I care, the developers care. We are going to get this right.

    Never any doubt about these! And so many, many thanks to all for all this effort. Upgrades and lift-shift are relentless PITA.

    Cleared cache and Win10/1903 on FireFox 71.0 is working like a dream. Clear your caches, jackals! Gremlins abound if you can’t or don’t.

  56. 56.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 12:25 pm

    @WaterGirl: No, the comment and then end up at the top needing a refresh glitch.

  57. 57.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 12:25 pm

    @dmsilev:
    OK, after half an hour or so, both the new-comment and reply-to-comment boxes have reverted to text-only.

    Edit: Comment posted immediately. Edit and new comment boxes are back to two-tab.

  58. 58.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 12:27 pm

    @WaterGirl: Per my #57, replying to a comment got me back into the 2-tab mode. Safari on Mac.

  59. 59.

    Mo' Salad

    December 20, 2019 at 12:28 pm

    @Steeplejack:  No. 16. I was referencing the 20 GB.

  60. 60.

    Elizabelle

    December 20, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    Thank you, WaterGirl and crew.

  61. 61.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    Going back to the home page _after_ the edit window on all comments has expired and then reloading this page gets me back to text-tab-only.

  62. 62.

    different-church-lady

    December 20, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    We’re glad you care. Maybe the rest of us shouldn’t care so much. Reliable online friends is a hell of a drug.

  63. 63.

    dmsilev

    December 20, 2019 at 12:35 pm

    If you don’t see both the Visual and the Text tab on the editor, click here to refresh.

    Can confirm that this works. Mac/Safari.

  64. 64.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 12:35 pm

    Don’t know if this is chocolate-level, but I seem to get the text-only comment box when I first go to the ‘comments’ section of a post, after going to the BJ site.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    December 20, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    @different-church-lady: 

    Especially for people without reliable real world friends.

  66. 66.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 12:37 pm

    And then, after making a comment, I get the normal edit box.

  67. 67.

    different-church-lady

    December 20, 2019 at 12:39 pm

    @Baud:  I don’t know what it is, but I seem to have fewer and fewer of those as the years wear on.

  68. 68.

    different-church-lady

    December 20, 2019 at 12:44 pm

    Oh, btw, there seems to be a huge DoS attack disrupting the east coast. A friend and I discovered it because she hasn’t been able to send texts all morning on Verizon.

  69. 69.

    piratedan

    December 20, 2019 at 12:45 pm

    I think part of the problem may be the continued use of the FYWP character set as an HL7 delimiter that is causing a parsing problem when it comes to the display of the textual comments…. now if we run this thru the interface engine and do a table conversion into all of those instances as being replaced by the poop emoji, I think we’ll all be a lot happier :-)

  70. 70.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 20, 2019 at 12:49 pm

    @WaterGirl: Teasing a bit, but you’re correct in that “not enough space” is a deal-breaker.

    In my long history of involvement in communications and computing, changing multiple variables is a sure way not to fix the problem. You’ve changed one huge one, and that’s the path to really getting down to business on the others.

  71. 71.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 20, 2019 at 12:50 pm

    @trollhattan: And that rug really brought the room together.

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 12:54 pm

    @jeffreyw:

    ETA, I am noticing that on a post comment the site reloads and I am taken to the top for a heartbeat, then the page jumps down to the correct spot.

    Yes, that’s exactly what happens when it works properly. For folks who get stuck at the top, it’s almost as thought whatever code is being executed stops before the final step.

  73. 73.

    JustRuss

    December 20, 2019 at 12:55 pm

    @jeffreyw: Probably no solid state drives, too pricey, still.

    Pricey?  Here’s a 128-gig SSD for 50 bucks, and a Terabyte will set you back about $200.  Sure, we’re talking a VM on a server and redundancy so jack that up a bit, but SSDs are still crazy cheap these days.

    https://www.newegg.com/intel-dc-s3110-128gb/p/1B4-008A-001H2?Item=9SIA0ZX72S0728

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    December 20, 2019 at 12:59 pm

    As a lot of people have been having no tags on the comment box at first and after refresh both, the issue may be cookies – how our machines are storing our preferences…..

    ETA

    Maybe we need a bit of time to let everything sort itself out before rushing to fix things that may have actually been fixed?

    ETA II

    May I also suggest that if one is having problems to close the BJ tab and then reopen? Or even close the browser and reopen? Just a suggestion……

  75. 75.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:00 pm

    @dmsilev: @MattF: Your comments got me thinking…

    Are any of you guys willing to test whether there is a different result, depending on HOW you get from the front page to a post with comments?

    Ways to get to a thread are:

    – click on the title of a particular thread on the front page

    – click on the # comments in the byline at the top

    – click on Post + Comments button

    – come to a thread with the previous post/next post wings

    – come to a thread from an RSS feed

    – come to a thread from a direct link (URL)

    any others I’m not thinking of that should be included?

    edit: To be perfectly clear, I am asking for people to test whether the method you use to come to an individual thread makes a difference in:  1)  whether you get visual mode with both the text/visual tabs available, or 2) whether you get TEXT mode with no tabs available.

  76. 76.

    Aleta

    December 20, 2019 at 1:02 pm

    “If you don’t see both the Visual and the Text tab on the editor, click here to refresh”
    (Useful addition, and it worked.)

    Testing ‘Edit’ on Safari 12.1.2

    Nat King Cole L-O-V-E
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K65GpBxsd

    ? ? ❄️ ?

    Improved: the Edit box comes up time after time (allowing consecutive Edits of same post). And it starts over at 5 min each time. Neither  improvement was happening before

    Improved: Edited changes show after each Update, no refresh needed.  5 or even 6 times in a row, I believe

     

    ETA Oops, looks like my link doesn’t connect. It  may be because of the way I copied it, first into a Safari notepad and then I copied that link in the notepad into my comment

     

    ETA 1. Test:  New link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K65GpBxsdY

    2.  Multiple edits  still working grea

     

    ETA New link works, so problem was on my end not the site.

    (Yes, my original link left off one character. )

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:03 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: Yep!  If nothing else, I am methodical.  Only change multiple things at once if someone or something is bleeding, and you just need to get to the final result, and you can worry about how you got to that result later, when the bleeding has stopped.

  78. 78.

    Kraux Pas

    December 20, 2019 at 1:04 pm

    Sometimes when I’m on my phone, the spell check doesn’t come up on the keyboard. I’ve never seen this occur in any other text field before.

    It really helps with contractions and the fact that there are no physical keys for me to feel my way across.

  79. 79.

    JeanneT

    December 20, 2019 at 1:05 pm

    OK, I see both the visual and text boxes.  A good start!

    I immediately see my post, and can edit.  So so far on Mac OS 10.13.6 and Firefox 71.0, looks good.

  80. 80.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 1:08 pm

    It looks like either clicking on #comments or Post + Comments button leads to a text-only edit box. After posting this, I should get the full-featured edit box.

    ETA: And I do.

  81. 81.

    geg6

    December 20, 2019 at 1:09 pm

    Okay, comment box has all the tabs, so that’s good. We’ll see what posting this comment does.

    ETA:  Took me straight to my comment, so that’s a big improvement.

    I’m on my work desktop using Firefox on Windows 365.  Will try again on my phone.

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:10 pm

    @dmsilev: Your link contains a query string that breaks cache (based on the time/date stamp of the comment you just created).

    That was added yesterday to resolve the “holding on to cache” issue that sometimes results in people having to manually refresh in order to see their comment.

    That works because the date/time stamp is unique, or very nearly unique.  So I hope no one saves the link you posted as a “surefire way” to get the choices in the edit box, because it will not be unique if people start using it.  :-)

  83. 83.

    joel hanes

    December 20, 2019 at 1:11 pm

    testing one two
    Now is the time for all good persons to come to the aid of their country
    Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz

    I love little cultural differences, like how Americans are super offended by the word cunt but here in Australia we’re super offended by school children being slaughtered with an automatic rifle
    — “thomas_violence” on twitter

  84. 84.

    geg6

    December 20, 2019 at 1:11 pm

    Trying comment on my phone.

    ETA:  Success!

  85. 85.

    joel hanes

    December 20, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    OK, that was the first time in weeks that a comment I posted showed up immediately when the screen refreshed after I hit submit.

     

    My compliments to the maintainers.

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    December 20, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    OK, so I replied to your comment about Test mode ony, and sure enuff, I got text mode only. Will load this comment in and see what i can break if I get an edit mode.

    Linux Ubuntu 18.04.3, Firefox 71.0

    back in testing mode sigh…

     

    ETA 1 — I got into Visual tab with both available when I clicked into edit mode. Hurray.

    Obviously no pattern with one trial…

    ETA 2 — also, was right at the comment I entered when refresh happened after posting the reply to weathergurl. ;-) sorry about the naming error last night… we celebrated Impeachment Day with cocktails and champagne yesterday.

  87. 87.

    Mary G

    December 20, 2019 at 1:15 pm

    @WaterGirl: You have the patience of a saint. Thank you and John so much, you in particular. I’m sure that when you decided to help out with this you didn’t expect to spend so much time with so many cranky jackals.
    I only have the text option for this comment and don’t care if I ever get the visual back.

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:19 pm

    @MattF: There is definitely chocolate in your future if you try the other methods and let me know those results, too. :-)

  89. 89.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 1:22 pm

    @JustRuss: Yeah, I get the Newegg promo emails several times a day.  Not sure how  the current hosting guys are operating but the big server farms where they are probably renting space still go with spinners.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    December 20, 2019 at 1:28 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    Took my own advice and wow!

    Closed the tab, new tab, reloaded. I’d barely moved my finger off the  key and bam loaded. I do have 200mps up/down service but still fast.

    And everything seems to work as expected and both tabs on comment box

    Gotta go, catch you all later…..

  91. 91.

    Fair Economist

    December 20, 2019 at 1:29 pm

    I actually haven’t been having problems except not being able to connect sometimes, and the delay on my posts showing up (which I’m pretty sure affects all posts and not just mine; it’s just that I obviously don’t know when somebody else has posted).

  92. 92.

    Fleeting Expletive

    December 20, 2019 at 1:29 pm

    I do miss the UP/DOWN navigation arrows on the side. Did that feature forever disappear?

  93. 93.

    SiubhanDuinne

    December 20, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    As far as I can tell, everything’s working the way it should. Will report back if I end up not being able to post or see this comment.

  94. 94.

    SiubhanDuinne

    December 20, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    Perfect and instantaneous!

  95. 95.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    December 20, 2019 at 1:32 pm

    @Mary G: Amen, amen.

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne

    December 20, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    @Fleeting Expletive:

     

    I actually prefer having them at the top. They’re far less obtrusive than they were before.

  97. 97.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:35 pm

    @Mary G: It’s so kind of you to say that!

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    @Fleeting Expletive: The up / down / right / left arrows are at the top on the right.  They are in the white bar that is always visible, regardless of how far down in the comments you are.

    I’m sorry you preferred them the other way and then we changed it up on you, but the current setup is especially helpful for folks on a phone or a tablet in portrait mode to have navigation options always available.

    If you missed the arrows the top, you might have also missed COMMENT (top left) that takes you directly to the comment box at the bottom and REFRESH, which I think is super helpful on mobile devices.

  99. 99.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 1:42 pm

    Rebooted laptop, loaded BJ from bookmark, loaded thread by clicking on the #comments link, found the comment box in text mode sans tabs

    ETA I scrolled to the bottom,not by clicking the comment button on the top header.

  100. 100.

    MattF

    December 20, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    Linking directly to a BJ comment seems to have mixed results for the edit box… But generally gives a full-featured edit box. I should say that I’m doing this by messing with Safari’s ‘Favorites’ category, so I can’t pretend to understand exactly what Safari is doing with the link.

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    December 20, 2019 at 1:52 pm

    Win10 Chrome.

    I notice that when I start on a new topic (via L/R flyouts or via the front page) and immediately go down to the Comment editor box (via End button) that the Visual and Text tabs are not there (the formatting buttons are blue) and I’m in Text mode.

    If I click the new “click here to refresh” link just above the Comment box, then the page refreshes and the tabs on the editor appear. Nice.

    (Note this doesn’t happen always – I opened a new B-J tab of the front page, started on a new thread, End, and the tabs were there.)

    I hope you get this tied down. The refreshing of the pages to get them to display correctly is obviously putting more load on the server and dB than is necessary.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  102. 102.

    Noncarborundum

    December 20, 2019 at 1:54 pm

    The edit timer on comment 7520012 kept resetting to 4:44 every time I refreshed after editing the comment. This isn’t a problem for me, but I doubt it’s working as intended.

  103. 103.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    @Another Scott:

    If I click the new “click here to refresh” link just above the Comment box, then the page refreshes and the tabs on the editor appear. Nice.

    Good catch.  You noticed the new link before I was able to tell people it was there!  :-)

  104. 104.

    Kelly

    December 20, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    At 9:45 ET this morning, the Balloon Juice website was successfully moved from a 20 GB space to a 100 GB space.

    640k ought to be enough for anybody ;-)

  105. 105.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 2:06 pm

    I just added an update to the original post.  I think you’ll all want to check it out.

  106. 106.

    jeffreyw

    December 20, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    @WaterGirl: cool!  s9 samsung phone, brave browser

    ETA   comment posted with no issues. tabs were absent on initial load

    ETA edited comment posted sans issues

  107. 107.

    waysel

    December 20, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    testing

  108. 108.

    waysel

    December 20, 2019 at 2:15 pm

    @WaterGirl: Testing as a reply.

  109. 109.

    waysel

    December 20, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    My comments show at posting now, no refresh needed, and I see Visual and Text options. Hooray!  Thanks, WaterGirl.

  110. 110.

    Scout211

    December 20, 2019 at 2:18 pm

    Wow!  Love that new “click here” link.  It works!

  111. 111.

    different-church-lady

    December 20, 2019 at 2:33 pm

    OK! Pretty sure I have a cause-and-effect relationship going on here…

    1) Click on post, go to “Leave a comment”, NO visual editor.
    2) Use “click here to refresh” and visual editor returns…
    3) …and remains through all refresh’es.
    Then…
    4) Go back to the front page, then click on a post, NO visual editor again!

    This behavior is happening both on my iPad and my MacBook laptop. It’s been totally repeatable through multiple trials.

  112. 112.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    December 20, 2019 at 2:34 pm

    @Scout211:

    I had to “click here”to see the visual and text tabs. At that point it lost the link of the (first of two) comment(s) I was replying to (Sorry Baud!).  Now let’s see about the editing and refresh? Ready, set, post……..

    eta: It posted quickly and rapidly took me back here where editing works like a charm

    eta 2: Win 10/chrome/ hp laptop

  113. 113.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 2:41 pm

    @different-church-lady: We agree with you!  Good on you for noticing that and reporting it here.

    Discussed that very thing was discussed with the developers about an hour or so ago.  Great minds…

  114. 114.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 2:42 pm

    @Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):

    I had to “click here”to see the visual and text tabs. At that point it lost the link of the (first of two) comment(s) I was replying to (Sorry Baud!).  Now let’s see about the editing and refresh? Ready, set, post……..

    Ah.  So you had already hit reply and @Baud etc was in the comment window when you used the “click here” link?  Yes, that will wipe out anything in a comment that you haven’t posted yet.

  115. 115.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    December 20, 2019 at 2:43 pm

    Seems if I use the “side wings*” to navigate I just get “text mode” without tabs.

    (Win10/Chrome).

    *If we keep on calling them Wings we may hear from Sir Paul’s attorneys.

  116. 116.

    waysel

    December 20, 2019 at 2:47 pm

    Yup. V & T tabs are absent unless I hit ‘click here to refresh’. Top of page refresh didn’t add them back, either.

  117. 117.

    waysel

    December 20, 2019 at 2:48 pm

    As soon as I hit ‘Post Comment’, V&T tabs appeared on the new comment box.

  118. 118.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    December 20, 2019 at 2:53 pm

    @WaterGirl:  Yep that’s what happened. Baud was wiped from memory (so to speak!)

    This time when I clicked reply I got the visual and text tabs with no need to “click here”.

    eta: I got to this post by hitting the back wing/link on the left side from the open thread that follows, not by returning to home.

    win 10/ chrome/ HP laptop

  119. 119.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 3:03 pm

    @Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):

    Baud was wiped from memory (so to speak!)

    Never!

    Thanks for the update.

  120. 120.

    Ohio Mom

    December 20, 2019 at 3:13 pm

    Germy,

    Just call your gas company. They will be there before you finish hanging up your phone. Really, they are like the fire department, except for possible gas leaks.

    If your stove isn’t safe, they will turn off the gas and put a red tag on the gas line. You’ll have to bring in your own plumber to fix it, remove the tag and turn the gas back on.

    That might be a few days with the holidays but you’ll know you are safe and that’s the main thing.

  121. 121.

    Ohio Mom

    December 20, 2019 at 3:35 pm

    Oops, my comment at 120 was meant for a different thread.

    Back on topic, i know this is heresy and probably won’t be appreciated, but maybe the new commenting system is too complicated? Maybe all those whistles and bells (is it really necessary to have a magenta option?) is what is gumming up the works? I think a more spare system might have fewer bugs.

  122. 122.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 3:40 pm

    @Ohio Mom: These are cache issues. No matter what we had for features, we would be using cache to speed up the site.

    The one remaining big issue that is not cache, also has nothing to do with bells & whistles.

    So while I appreciate your willingness to sacrifice for the cause :-) that wouldn’t help with the issues.

    P.S. Would you like me to delete the comment you put on this thread by mistake?

  123. 123.

    NotMax

    December 20, 2019 at 3:49 pm

    @WaterGirl

    If anyone can discern a pattern re: what sends you into TEXT mode with no tabs, I will personally send you chocolate.

    It pops up in direct proportion to the purity of each commenter’s precious bodily fluids.

    Either that or a defective frammistan.

  124. 124.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 3:52 pm

    @NotMax: Sorry, no chocolate for you! :-)

    At least not from me.  Maybe from your mom for Christmas?

  125. 125.

    NotMax

    December 20, 2019 at 4:08 pm

    Don’t know if this will be of any help as it is experience with the V & T tabs with javascript disabled.

    Of course the V & T tabs don’t do anything with j-script off, that’s to be expected. What I’m addressing is their being or not being present.

    Coming to a comments page on which I have not yet posted a comment by opening it a new browser tab from the front page, neither V nor T tab shows. Same behavior on that comments page after refreshing, so long as I have not yet posted a comment. After I’ve posted a comment on that comment page, both V & T tabs show up.

  126. 126.

    J R in WV

    December 20, 2019 at 4:10 pm

    I entered this thread by using a side tag from the current top thread about Nancy’s imvitation to Trump to present the State of the Union speech in the House chambers, which is pretty funny as Betty C usually is.

    Interestingly, my comment box at the bottom of the site update thread is text only, no Visual tab at all. According to my doctor, my bodily fluids are in proper balance, but I don’t think that’s why my comment box is text only.

    Do I get a chocolate? Not yet, probably. Let’s see what happens when I load this puppy up…

    ETA one. Flashed to top of thread, back to bottom. Comment box now has both a Visual tab and a Text tab.

  127. 127.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 4:21 pm

    @NotMax: Yeah, I think we are starting to have the “What” nailed down.  What we don’t know yet is the Why.

    Yesterday the developers changed the process that occurs when saving a comment (from reply or comment) so that brings back Visual mode, with the Visual/Text tabs as a choice.  As part of that change, you no longer get a cached page, which means your comments should show up right away.

    Today the developers added the link (in the comment area) that makes sure you don’t get a cached page and brings back Visual mode with the Visual/Text tabs as a choice.  We still have to figure out why that gets lost in the first place, but in the meantime the link seems to work like a charm, so that’s good.

  128. 128.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 4:22 pm

    @J R in WV:

    Flashed to top of thread, back to bottom. Comment box now has both a Visual tab and a Text tab.

    Yep!  That should happen all the time now, with the changes that were made yesterday and today.  We shall see!

  129. 129.

    Suzanne

    December 20, 2019 at 4:25 pm

    I have trouble on my tablet with rep’ying to a comment. If I hit the reply button, the screen goes gray, and a pop up window appears…..but I have to manually scroll through all the comments to find it. It’s very weird.

  130. 130.

    Suzanne

    December 20, 2019 at 4:29 pm

    @MattF: Testing replying on my iPad to comment #25. Had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find this window. HATE THAT.

  131. 131.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 4:36 pm

    @Suzanne: Have you tried hitting COMMENT from the white bar at the top?

  132. 132.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 4:38 pm

    @Suzanne: When you hit Reply, the popup box should show up where you are.  Does it not do that?

    Assuming you get the Reply box, If you don’t like replying from that box, you can click the X to close the popup box once the @nym is in there; then hit COMMENT in the white bar at the top which will take you right to the comment box at the bottom

    Does that help?

  133. 133.

    Yarrow

    December 20, 2019 at 4:45 pm

    I did the hard refresh and now have Visual and Text tabs. Will let you know if they don’t stick around.

    I’ve figured out one of the issues with the Back arrow. If you have not posted and are just following a conversation using the @nym to go back up, you can use the Back arrowto get back to where you started. It should work fine.

    If you have commented in the thread and then want to follow a conversation up using @nym and return using Back at some point in the middle of clicking the back arrow it will return you to your last comment. At least that’s what it does for me.

    Once I’ve commented the only way to follow a conversation using the @nym and back is to start over by clicking the top of the thread and/or removing the end of the URL where it shows the comment number and then start following a conversation with @nym/back arrow.

    Edit: comment posted right away and Edit appeared. I think the thread isn’t busy so real test is during a busier thread.

  134. 134.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 4:46 pm

    @Yarrow: Well, that’s super helpful information.  I will add it to the  To Do item for the back arrow.  thanks!

  135. 135.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 4:51 pm

    @Yarrow:

    Edit: comment posted right away and Edit appeared. I think the thread isn’t busy so real test is during a busier thread.

    The site got less predictable, and issues became more frequent and more problematic, when the site was busy – I think the lack of system space was a huge part of that issue.  So please be sure to mention it if you notice that is better now from that perspective.  Or not.

  136. 136.

    joel hanes

    December 20, 2019 at 5:18 pm

    @NotMax: 

    Either that or a defective frammistan.

    The Turbo-Encabulator was developed in an attempt to find a long-term solution to frammistan failure.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w

  137. 137.

    Yarrow

    December 20, 2019 at 5:25 pm

    @WaterGirl:  You’re welcome. This was always an issue with the old site. When you post a comment the page refreshes with a new URL with the comment number extension. So clicking back takes you to the old page–either a previous comment with that comment number in the URL or the “front page” of the thread–without any comment extension in the URL, depending on if you’ve commented on the thread previously or not. I’m not sure you can override it effectively with coding because it may be part of how the browser works. Something to check out, though.

  138. 138.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 5:42 pm

    In the previous post https://balloon-juice.com/2019/12/20/plan-domination-in-the-csr-94-variants/
    David’s graphic is showing in the lower quarter (or fifth) of the graphic window around it, cutting off all but the north of the US map with a bunch of white space above it. On my Chromebook with Chrome.

  139. 139.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:08 pm

    @JaySinWA: It does something similar for me in Safari on my mac, except that the whole map loads for a second, then it goes away and I see what you see.  I let David know.  thanks.

  140. 140.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:12 pm

    @Yarrow: The back button has been working better for me today after the changes.  We’ll see how it plays out over the next couple of days.

  141. 141.

    Yarrow

    December 20, 2019 at 6:14 pm

    On the next thread I refreshed and since I’m near the bottom of the thread I saw the comment box . I noticed it was showing only the Text version with no tabs for either Visual or Text. Chrome, Win10. I have commented a few times in that thread and both tabs were showing.

  142. 142.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 6:15 pm

    <a href=”#comment-7520278″>@JaySinWA</a>:&nbsp;<a href=”#comment-7520278″>@JaySinWA</a>:&nbsp; Same with IE11 and Edge on Win 10. may be a content error.

    Here in Chrome on Win10 I have a comment window with text mode and no tabs. I just had the same problem on Edge and lost my comment text when doing the refresh. I had tried to save it with select and copy, but only got the select part right. I’ll try again with Chrome.

    And I am back with tabs and text pasted from copy. Copied in text mode and was changed to visual mode but the refresh so the links got textified in paste.

    Switching to text to retry paste:
    =====
    @JaySinWA: @JaySinWA:  Same with IE11 and Edge on Win 10. may be a content error.

    Here in Chrome on Win10 I have a comment window with text mode and no tabs. I just had the same problem on Edge and lost my comment text when doing the refresh. I had tried to save it with select and copy, but only got the select part right. I’ll try again with Chrome.
    ====
    That worked.

  143. 143.

    Yarrow

    December 20, 2019 at 6:18 pm

    Re: this addition above the comment box:

    If you don’t see both the Visual and the Text tab on the editor,

    Is that intended just for the Edit box if you edit a comment or for the comment box for a new comment? The word “editor” confused me.

  144. 144.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 6:20 pm

    @WaterGirl: Yes I get the brief flash of the whole map as well. I tried it on a Chromebook Linux Brave test and got some text error message about window boundaries I’ll try it on Win Brave.

    Here’s the error message from Brave.

    Unexpected Error
    An unexpected error occurred. If you continue to receive this error please contact your Tableau Server Administrator.
    Session ID: 9325B186FF654258A4FC5A9F2E112F46-0:0
    Uncaught RangeError: out of range source coordinates for image copy

  145. 145.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 6:24 pm

    @Yarrow: I is showing up in both for me. And it wipes out anything you have typed before you notice you are in weird mode so you need to copy the comment and paste after refresh, switching back to text mode for the paste if you were in dumped into text mode by the editor without tabs to fix the html if any in the post or reply.

  146. 146.

    Yarrow

    December 20, 2019 at 6:25 pm

    @Yarrow:  Just FYI, in the next thread I did the hard refresh from the link in the line above the comment box. Both the Visual and Text tabs showed up. I refreshed again (regular refresh) a few minutes later to see if there were any new comments and now the tabs are missing in the comment box again and it shows the coding for the Text version.

    Edit: Refreshed that thread again (regular refresh) and now both tabs are back. It’s coming and going.

  147. 147.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:34 pm

    @Yarrow: Have you seen the link by the comment box that you can click to have Visual mode and the text/visual tags return?  It’s a workaround for now, but it seems to work like a charm when the  tabs have disappeared.

  148. 148.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:36 pm

    @Yarrow: Yeah, that’s what the comment creation box is technically called – it’s an editor.  If that confuses people, we can think about changing the wording.

    Whenever you the comment box or the reply box comes up in Text mode, with no Visual/Text tabs, you can click on that link, and visual mode returns with the tabs present.

  149. 149.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 6:38 pm

    Okay I am seeing the no tabs edit box in Visual mode. Last time it was in text mode.@WaterGirl

    ETA Nevermind, I saw the text edit buttons and thought visual. Too old for this apparently.

  150. 150.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:39 pm

    @Yarrow: If the tabs are missing from the comment box or reply box, your best bet is to click the link that was added today near the comment box.  That’s your guaranteed way to get the tabs back.  No refreshing required.

  151. 151.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:41 pm

    @JaySinWA: If you see that again, please make a note whatever you have just done and what device/browser combo you used, grab a screen capture and send it to me.

    You can email the screen capture as an attachment in email to WaterGirl, or you can Report a Problem through the Site Feedback form, which now allows you to attach a screen capture.

  152. 152.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 6:43 pm

    @WaterGirl:  But the link says “refresh” ;-) Make up your mind. And where are the emojis when I need them? Rhetorical question, too lazy to look for them in Win10

  153. 153.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 6:43 pm

    @JaySinWA:

    And it wipes out anything you have typed before you notice you are in weird mode so you need to copy the comment and paste…

    That is correct!  If you have already started your comment, select anything that is already in the box, copy it, and paste it back in after you click the magic button to get your tabs back.

  154. 154.

    Ruckus

    December 20, 2019 at 6:45 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    At this point, while there may still be some issues, the site is what, about 1000% better.

    Applause for a good job!

  155. 155.

    Ripley

    December 20, 2019 at 6:47 pm

    Odd quirk if there’s an Anderson post with a Tableau chart on the front page: I’m immediately dropped to the chart and see this error message.

    Unexpected Error
    An unexpected error occurred. If you continue to receive this error please contact your Tableau Server Administrator.
    Session ID: 273A295289F1445EBAE2556E42F738E8-0:0
    Uncaught RangeError: out of range source coordinates for image copy

    Win10 with Brave browser. Could be a browser issue; it’s shown some ‘personality’ on other sites and media, as well.

  156. 156.

    JaySinWA

    December 20, 2019 at 6:47 pm

    @WaterGirl: Which “that” are you refering to? no tabs, or no tabs and visual mode, because the latter was just a misinterpretation. I seem to end up in text mode when no tabs show up. I am pretty sure it has only happened to me on Win10 Chrome and Win10 Edge. It seems to hit when I link directly to the post from another post or comment.

  157. 157.

    Yutsano

    December 20, 2019 at 6:47 pm

    @WaterGirl: @Ruckus: I will say this: juicing the memory has wiped out a few issues on my primitive work browser.

  158. 158.

    Yarrow

    December 20, 2019 at 6:50 pm

    @WaterGirl:  Isn’t that link a refresh link? So if I’ve started a comment and realize the tabs are missing I’ve got to copy what I’ve already written and then click that link (refresh). I mean, it seems to refresh the page when I click that link but maybe I’m wrong.

    I prefer the Text tab so it’s no problem at all for me if the Visual tab isn’t there. In fact, I prefer doing my own coding because I can see where the breaks are and eliminate unnecessary white space. Also, if I’m posting a tweet it just shows as code if I post it from Visual. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve forgotten the extra step of having to click to the Text tab to paste a tweet. I see it after it has posted and then I have to go back and edit the comment. If the Edit option is available, that is. So I’m completely happy with no Visual tab option. Prefer it that way.

  159. 159.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 7:00 pm

    @JaySinWA: My entire comment was made before I saw your edit that said “never mind, it wasn’t really in visual mode”.  So you can just ignore what I wrote.

  160. 160.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 7:07 pm

    @Yarrow: I’m happy you’re happy, but when the developers figure out the “why” we are getting the Text mode with no tabs, you will be back to defaulting to visual mode, with tabs. But in the meantime, you get what you wanted.  :-)

    Isn’t that link a refresh link? So if I’ve started a comment and realize the tabs are missing I’ve got to copy what I’ve already written and then click that link (refresh). I mean, it seems to refresh the page when I click that link but maybe I’m wrong.

    What you’re saying is not totally right, and it’s not totally wrong.  That link does in fact, refresh the page, but it does it in a certain way that clears your cache so you get the current page, not some page that has been cached.

    If you do any of the regular refreshes, you may or may not get the latest page, so you may have to refresh more than once.  If you click the specified link, it does what we need it to do, the first time.

    Every refresh is a pageview, and hosting is charged based pageviews, so unnecessary refreshes means more $ for hosting.  Not to mention that it increases the load on the site, with no actual benefit to anyone.

  161. 161.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 7:22 pm

    Site Issues Update: Major Change – Starting with a Clean Slate on Issues 1

    I finally decorated my tree yesterday.

  162. 162.

    Baud

    December 20, 2019 at 7:24 pm

    @WaterGirl: ??

  163. 163.

    WaterGirl

    December 20, 2019 at 7:28 pm

    @Baud: Tucker snuck in at the last minute!

  164. 164.

    Aleta

    December 21, 2019 at 1:01 am

    Hi WaterGirl,

    FYI:  I posted a comment around 12:50 a.m. Saturday in the newest thread Star Warz.  The comment had two links and about 6 quote boxes (from a NYT article).

     

    The comment box seemed fine — it came up as Visual with tabs, and I wrote in and posted from that box. (Was that my mistake?)  The comment vanished as soon as I clicked Post. No message about moderation.

    I dont mind that it disappeared; just letting you know as requested.

     

    Big thanks for your everything.

  165. 165.

    Aleta

    December 21, 2019 at 1:16 am

    @WaterGirl: gorgeous

    (and such a beautiful dog)

  166. 166.

    Aleta

    December 21, 2019 at 1:19 am

    @Aleta: WG: I have a feeling it doesnt work to post from the visual tab?  (I think I did so in the past w/o prob. ).  I’ll try it now from the visual tab)

     

    ETA Worked fine so I guess that is not the problem.  BTW the comment box has been coming  up just fine with the tabs, in Visual, all night. ??

  167. 167.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 9:02 am

    @Aleta: Thank you, Aleta, for letting me know.  WordPress thought your article was spam.  I marked it as not spam and released it

  168. 168.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 9:05 am

    @Aleta: Thank you!  I was verifying something related to images, and I thought “why not use a picture of my tree?”

  169. 169.

    EthylEster

    December 21, 2019 at 12:04 pm

    I asked this question a couple of weeks ago in a dead thread. Here goes again.

    Approximately how much did the new site cost?

    And by approximate I mean: $1K or $3K or $10K or $30K or $100K (choose one).

  170. 170.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 1:13 pm

    @EthylEster: Going with your rough figures…

    10k to build the site.

    10k a year for hosting.

  171. 171.

    Yarrow

    December 21, 2019 at 1:22 pm

    @WaterGirl:  Thank you for the clarification. I don’t like Visual except as a check to make sure everything is displaying correcting. I will just not bother refreshing it. I have been refreshing the page to check to see if I get the Text only (no tabs displayed) or the Visual and Text tabs but since that costs money I’ll quit doing that. As of this morning I’m still getting Text only (no tabs), which, as you know, I love! LOL. I’ll be sad when they fix it.

    Question: Why do we have the pop up comment box? I find it annoying because you can’t reply to two people in the comment without closing that box. I’ll use it for short replies but overall I think it’s kind of a bother. Is it something people requested? A preferred way of commenting? Easier on the server? Style preference of the designers? Just trying to understand why you all went with it. Thanks.

  172. 172.

    Aleta

    December 21, 2019 at 1:26 pm

    @WaterGirl: I’m interested in how to avoid that.  Is  ‘spam designation’ set off by too many quote boxes, or by length of comment, or a combination of things or … ?

    I thought it only had two links, although I’m realizing (possibly?) with the new site that live links might creep in if they were in something I had copied (? not sure).   But are  there  w/o my awareness, unless I also check for signs of that  in the Text box.  (? really not sure)

    Again … really ✨ nice ✨ tree.  ✨

  173. 173.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    @Aleta: I always try to explain what landed someone into spam… more than 7 links, etc.

    In this case, I don’t know exactly why it landed in spam. I counted 2 links, so that wasn’t it.

    Just eyeballing your post in the spam filter, it did have the general “look and feel” of spam, mostly because of its length.

    You know how anti-virus software looks for known viruses, but also looks for stuff that looks or behaves in the way that viruses work?

    This is just an educated guess, but I imagine the WordPress spam filter works in a similar fashion. It looks for known spammers – casinos, drug sales, etc, and It looks for nyms+email+IP addresses that have been specifically marked by us as spam.

    But it surely also has a more sophisticated component that looks at behaviors, and at the look and feel of the comment.  I would guess that you were caught by that because of exactly what you guessed: the length and lots of quotes.

    We don’t have a single thing in the file that would automatically throw a comment into moderation, so I would be surprised if there was a magic word in there that got you into trouble.  (On the old site, that file contained several cyrillic characters and lots of other words that caused people to go into moderation.)

    We made the decision to start out with a clean slate on the new site and have been well covered by the spam filter, so there has been no need to add anything to the “instant moderation” list.

    If it went into spam as what I would call a “one-off”, then it might not be worth pursuing unless it happens again.

    But if it does happen again, after the holidays we could do some testing to see if we can tempt the spam filter with some comments that are long and some that have a lot of block quotes, and some that have both, and see if bites.  If it does, we may be able to reverse engineer why that might have gone into spam.

    Let me know if you have questions about anything I wrote, thanks.

  174. 174.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 1:55 pm

    @Aleta: Really glad you like my tree.  I put it up right before Thanksgiving, but only decorated it on Thursday.  So silly to have waited!

    Not sure if you received my note about your brother… I’m really sorry, and it’s especially hard to be looking at the holidays coming so soon after that.

  175. 175.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    @Yarrow:

    As of this morning I’m still getting Text only (no tabs), which, as you know, I love! LOL. I’ll be sad when they fix it.

    With the workaround in place, I can’t imagine they will be working on that issue before the new year.  So Merry Christmas! :-)

  176. 176.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 2:00 pm

    @Yarrow:

    Question: Why do we have the pop up comment box? I find it annoying because you can’t reply to two people in the comment without closing that box. I’ll use it for short replies but overall I think it’s kind of a bother. Is it something people requested? A preferred way of commenting? Easier on the server? Style preference of the designers? Just trying to understand why you all went with it. Thanks.

    I’ll come back to this one later today, after I do some packing, so be sure to check back.

  177. 177.

    WaterGirl

    December 21, 2019 at 3:42 pm

    @Yarrow:

    Why do we have the pop up comment box?

    Because there’s no reason to go all the way to the bottom of the site to get to the comment box when you are replying to someone.  You hit reply and the reply box comes up for your comment, and you can start typing.  You don’t need to travel down to the comment box.

    But if you don’t care for the reply box for some reason, you can just click the X to close the box, and then hit COMMENT in the white bar, and you can complete your comment at the bottom.

    The reply popup also simplifies the process of replying to multiple people.  On the old site, if I wanted to reply to raven and to Omnes, I would hit reply to raven, and I would end up in the comment box.

    Then, to reply to Omnes, too, I had to scroll up to find the comment from Omnes, hit reply, and then go back down to the comment box.  Now I hit reply to raven, click the X, go to Omnes, a couple of comments down, and hit reply.  Then I start typing what I want to say to them. To me, that is way simpler than it was before.

    If you don’t like typing in the reply box, you can hit reply to raven, click the X, go to Omnes, hit reply, close the X, and hit COMMENT.  Then you can write your comment in the comment box. I understand that if you find the reply box annoying, you are unlikely to see it as an improvement.

    Is it something people requested? A preferred way of commenting?

    Nope. When the developer asked if there was a reason we would want to go all the way down to the bottom of the comments in order to reply to the comment we were on, I couldn’t think of a single reason why we would want to do that, other than “that’s how we’ve always done it”.

    I said let’s see what it looks like, and I liked it better.  To me, it’s more simple and more elegant the way it is now.  We don’t have to agree on that. :-)

    Easier on the server?
    No difference.
    Style preference of the designers?

    I guess you’d have to say it was my style preference.  The developers pretty much did everything I asked for (except underline!) in the way that I asked for it.

    Love it or hate it, the choices were mostly mine.  All implemented by a very talented team of people, aka the developers.

    Just trying to understand why you all went with it.

    I hope this helps!

  178. 178.

    Yarrow

    December 21, 2019 at 8:30 pm

    @WaterGirl:  Lol. Thank you.

    @WaterGirl: Appreciate the explanation. I understand you find it easier but I don’t find the pop up comment box any easier for replying to more than one person. I still have to scroll around to find the second comment and I have to go down to the bottom to finish the comment. The clicking and scrolling is pretty much the same as the old site with the additional step of having to close the pop up comment box. It seems harder to me but maybe that’s just me.

    I don’t like the pop up because I can only increase the comment box to a certain size. It works for quick replies but if a comment gets longer it’s awkward. With the one in the actual page I can make it pretty much as large as I want. The pop up box is fixed in size, at least on my browser, so I can’t increase the comment box past that size.

    Also, if I just want to comment, not reply, I think the only choice is to scroll to the bottom and use the box that’s in the page. Is that right? Is there some other button that makes the comment box pop up outside of using the Reply button on a comment? If I’m correct that hitting Reply is the only way to get the pop up then it seems like a specialized option only used for replying, not the actual main way to comment.

    To me, it’s more simple and more elegant the way it is now.

    I dunno. It seems like an extra step to have the pop up and I think it only appears when replying, so it seems kludgy to me and not more elegant, but obviously we’re going to disagree on that one. Thanks for your explanation.

  179. 179.

    WaterGirl

    December 22, 2019 at 3:19 am

    @Yarrow:  I get what you are saying about only being able to expand the size of the reply box to a certain point.

    Yes, the popup box only appears for replies.  Otherwise, you use the comment box at the bottom.

    You also asked if the only choice for getting to the comment box is to scroll to the bottom and use the box that’s in the page. That depends on exactly what you mean by “scroll”. You can manually scroll, yes, but you can also hit COMMENT in the white bar that’s always at the top, and that takes you to the comment box without manually scrolling.

    We tried to make the site beautiful, functional, reliable, clean, and happy.  We’re still working on reliable, to a certain extent, because of the remaining cache issues.  But I think we are most of the way there with the move the site to a bigger server this week.

    People come to the site in different ways, and use it differently; it’s truly not possible to create a site that will please everyone.

    I imagine it’s small consolation, but that’s the best I can offer.

  180. 180.

    Yarrow

    December 22, 2019 at 11:45 am

    @WaterGirl:  I appreciate we all do things differently and I also appreciate your effort and unfailing patience with people as you deal with complaints and so forth.

    I think you may have misunderstood my question. The question was is there any other way to get the POP UP comment box other than clicking on Reply on a comment? I can’t see one but perhaps I’ve missed it. I know there are several ways to get to the comment box at the bottom.

    Thought I would mention that in this thread there are two people who are expressing frustration that they can’t use HTML markup. They didn’t know about the Visual and Text tabs so put HTML into Visual and it just posted the code. It got me thinking that if you don’t know what “Visual” and “Text” mean there isn’t any explanation anywhere near the comment box. You just have to kind of learn from other people in the comments. Is there a way to rename those so they offer more explanation of what they are/do? Or maybe put a line somewhere near the comment box about what they are and why you might want one or the other?

  181. 181.

    WaterGirl

    December 23, 2019 at 9:37 am

    @Yarrow:

    I think you may have misunderstood my question. The question was is there any other way to get the POP UP comment box other than clicking on Reply on a comment?

    Oh, sorry.  I thought you didn’t like the popup reply box, so I didn’t catch that you wondered if there was any other way to bring that up.  No, there is not.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8

Recent Comments

  • Dan B on No Cake for Me Today Open Thread (Mar 23, 2023 @ 7:34pm)
  • Gvg on No Cake for Me Today Open Thread (Mar 23, 2023 @ 7:33pm)
  • Dorothy A. Winsor on No Cake for Me Today Open Thread (Mar 23, 2023 @ 7:31pm)
  • WaterGirl on No Cake for Me Today Open Thread (Mar 23, 2023 @ 7:31pm)
  • JPL on No Cake for Me Today Open Thread (Mar 23, 2023 @ 7:30pm)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Classified Documents: A Primer
State & Local Elections Discussion

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!