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.
jeffreyw
The usual – comment box opens in text mode sans tabs. Dell laptop win10 chrome .
dmsilev
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?
Baud
Once this morning, my comment was cached, but otherwise I haven’t had that problem since last night.
jeffreyw
Tabs are there, now, and edit box is working well.
ETA comments are showing up with no problems.
Baud
@Baud:
And what do you know, it just happened again.
Baud
@Baud: No edit box on Comment 3.
dmsilev
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.
Mo' Salad (--bd)
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.
Yutsano
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!
jeffreyw
@jeffreyw: setting up a reply to see how that acts. Both tabs are visible in the reply box.
ETA my reply appeared quickly.
dmsilev
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.
WhatsMyNym
No tabs on comment box, WYSIWYG mode only. Firefox on Android.
ETA: tabs are now shown.
jeffreyw
@jeffreyw: Making a reply to my reply to check on back arrow issues. Box tabs visible in reply box. So far, so good.
eclare
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.
zhena gogolia
No text tab. We’ll see if my comment posts or if I have to hard refresh in order to see it.
jeffreyw
@jeffreyw: Two back arrow jumps and I am back to where I started. Yay
zhena gogolia
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).
zhena gogolia
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!
jeffreyw
@jeffreyw: A refresh and I’m back to where I was without a problem.
MattF
Edit box is text-only right now.
MattF
Edit box back to normal.
jeffreyw
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.
WaterGirl
@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!
Steeplejack
@Mo’ Salad (–bd):
Your phone has 100 GB of storage?! C’mon, man.
MattF
Neither of the comments I just made appears to be editable. iPad on Safari.
ETA: Added— Now all comments appear editable.
WaterGirl
@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.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
The comment I just entered got the “generic” comment box—no Visual/Text tabs. Now this comment box has the tabs. (Win10, Firefox.)
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: Are the drives in the server solid state?
WaterGirl
@Mo’ Salad (–bd): This is a virtual machine, so it’s a different world than the space you have on your phone.
Scout211
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.
WaterGirl
@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. :-)
A Ghost To Most
I am still around, if you need another knowledgeable head to bounce database issues off. Otherwise, good luck.
Adios.
Villago Delenda Est
Shorter WaterGirl: We’ve changed one particularly annoying variable. Let’s see how this baby behaves now.
Scout211
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
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
eclare
@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?
WaterGirl
@Kayla Rudbek:
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.
jeffreyw
@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.
chris
(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.
trollhattan
Let’s just see how our new, ginormous townhouse is working out.
Displayed as soon as I posted, stayed on the bottom of the thread, edit option available. Win 10, Chrome.
WaterGirl
@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!
WaterGirl
@trollhattan:
Is there an echo? :-)
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: Probably no solid state drives, too pricey, still.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Trackballs, too. Let me know what you notice.
zhena gogolia
Now I only have the visual, no text tab.
Золотистого меда струя из бутылки текла
Так тягуче и долго, что молвить хозяйка успела:
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
There wouldn’t be, if only the nihilists hadn’t peed on the rug.
jeffreyw
@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.
WaterGirl
There seems to be a pattern, though there seem to be some exceptions.
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.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Are you referring to your glitch at comment #1?
WaterGirl
Leaving for about 25 minutes, will check back as soon as I return.
BruceFromOhio
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.
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: No, the comment and then end up at the top needing a refresh glitch.
dmsilev
@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.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: Per my #57, replying to a comment got me back into the 2-tab mode. Safari on Mac.
Mo' Salad
@Steeplejack: No. 16. I was referencing the 20 GB.
Elizabelle
Thank you, WaterGirl and crew.
dmsilev
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.
different-church-lady
We’re glad you care. Maybe the rest of us shouldn’t care so much. Reliable online friends is a hell of a drug.
dmsilev
Can confirm that this works. Mac/Safari.
MattF
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.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Especially for people without reliable real world friends.
MattF
And then, after making a comment, I get the normal edit box.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I don’t know what it is, but I seem to have fewer and fewer of those as the years wear on.
different-church-lady
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.
piratedan
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 :-)
Villago Delenda Est
@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.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: And that rug really brought the room together.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw:
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.
JustRuss
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
Ruckus
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……
WaterGirl
@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.
Aleta
“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. )
WaterGirl
@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.
Kraux Pas
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.
JeanneT
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.
MattF
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.
geg6
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.
WaterGirl
@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. :-)
joel hanes
testing one twoNow is the time for all good persons to come to the aid of their country
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz
geg6
Trying comment on my phone.
ETA: Success!
joel hanes
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.
J R in WV
@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.
Mary G
@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.
WaterGirl
@MattF: There is definitely chocolate in your future if you try the other methods and let me know those results, too. :-)
jeffreyw
@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.
Ruckus
@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…..
Fair Economist
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).
Fleeting Expletive
I do miss the UP/DOWN navigation arrows on the side. Did that feature forever disappear?
SiubhanDuinne
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.
SiubhanDuinne
Perfect and instantaneous!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Mary G: Amen, amen.
SiubhanDuinne
@Fleeting Expletive:
I actually prefer having them at the top. They’re far less obtrusive than they were before.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: It’s so kind of you to say that!
WaterGirl
@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.
jeffreyw
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.
MattF
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.
Another Scott
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.
Noncarborundum
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.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Good catch. You noticed the new link before I was able to tell people it was there! :-)
Kelly
640k ought to be enough for anybody ;-)
WaterGirl
I just added an update to the original post. I think you’ll all want to check it out.
jeffreyw
@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
waysel
testing
waysel
@WaterGirl: Testing as a reply.
waysel
My comments show at posting now, no refresh needed, and I see Visual and Text options. Hooray! Thanks, WaterGirl.
Scout211
Wow! Love that new “click here” link. It works!
different-church-lady
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.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@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
WaterGirl
@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…
WaterGirl
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):
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.
?BillinGlendaleCA
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.
waysel
Yup. V & T tabs are absent unless I hit ‘click here to refresh’. Top of page refresh didn’t add them back, either.
waysel
As soon as I hit ‘Post Comment’, V&T tabs appeared on the new comment box.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@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
WaterGirl
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):
Never!
Thanks for the update.
Ohio Mom
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.
Ohio Mom
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.
WaterGirl
@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?
NotMax
@WaterGirl
It pops up in direct proportion to the purity of each commenter’s precious bodily fluids.
Either that or a defective frammistan.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Sorry, no chocolate for you! :-)
At least not from me. Maybe from your mom for Christmas?
NotMax
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.
J R in WV
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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV:
Yep! That should happen all the time now, with the changes that were made yesterday and today. We shall see!
Suzanne
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.
Suzanne
@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.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Have you tried hitting COMMENT from the white bar at the top?
WaterGirl
@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?
Yarrow
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.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: Well, that’s super helpful information. I will add it to the To Do item for the back arrow. thanks!
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
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.
joel hanes
@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
Yarrow
@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.
JaySinWA
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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
Yarrow
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.
JaySinWA
<a href=”#comment-7520278″>@JaySinWA</a>: <a href=”#comment-7520278″>@JaySinWA</a>: 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.
Yarrow
Re: this addition above the comment box:
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.
JaySinWA
@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
JaySinWA
@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.
Yarrow
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
JaySinWA
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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
JaySinWA
@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
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA:
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.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
At this point, while there may still be some issues, the site is what, about 1000% better.
Applause for a good job!
Ripley
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.
Win10 with Brave browser. Could be a browser issue; it’s shown some ‘personality’ on other sites and media, as well.
JaySinWA
@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.
Yutsano
@WaterGirl: @Ruckus: I will say this: juicing the memory has wiped out a few issues on my primitive work browser.
Yarrow
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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. :-)
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.
WaterGirl
I finally decorated my tree yesterday.
Baud
@WaterGirl: ??
WaterGirl
@Baud: Tucker snuck in at the last minute!
Aleta
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.
Aleta
@WaterGirl: gorgeous
(and such a beautiful dog)
Aleta
@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. ??
WaterGirl
@Aleta: Thank you, Aleta, for letting me know. WordPress thought your article was spam. I marked it as not spam and released it
WaterGirl
@Aleta: Thank you! I was verifying something related to images, and I thought “why not use a picture of my tree?”
EthylEster
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).
WaterGirl
@EthylEster: Going with your rough figures…
10k to build the site.
10k a year for hosting.
Yarrow
@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.
Aleta
@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. ✨
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@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.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
With the workaround in place, I can’t imagine they will be working on that issue before the new year. So Merry Christmas! :-)
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
I’ll come back to this one later today, after I do some packing, so be sure to check back.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
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.
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. :-)
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.
I hope this helps!
Yarrow
@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.
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.
WaterGirl
@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.
Yarrow
@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?
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
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.