Bugs and things to fix

[OrigamiOwl]

Owl, I've been seeing your avatar as a tiny Australian flag since yesterday.

D: well, it's not on purpose- I'm not that patriotic! :S

Is it still there?

[mithrysc]

Reposting this here, because noako appears to have gone MIA:

Not really an improvement, but was there any reason the Language learning discussion was locked? I've been offline for a few days, and maybe something came up that I missed, so sorry if the answer's really obvious.

[Eich]

Reposting this here, because noako appears to have gone MIA:

Got it.  Not sure why that happened... 

[Varjohaltia]

This is Varjohaltia's icon.  He just joined the Forum today, and has made exactly one post (that we know of). 

I doubt he wields enough dark magic to do this deliberately.  OTOH, about an hour ago I *did* share with him tips on how to create language flags in his Forum profile (i.e. : country : ) and he promptly did so.  Could a software glitch somehow have caught onto the new flags on his profile?

...and I just made it through this forum thread, only to find I'm suddenly notorious. Yikes! No, alas, I'm afraid I have no explanation for what might have caused that. I did try a bunch of different BBCode variants for flags ([flag]fi[/flag]) etc. that resulted in nothing happening until being pointed in the correct direction, but that's about as much mucking with things that I tried to do :-o

[Sunflower]

...and I just made it through this forum thread, only to find I'm suddenly notorious. Yikes! No, alas, I'm afraid I have no explanation for what might have caused that. I did try a bunch of different BBCode variants for flags ([flag]fi[/flag]) etc. that resulted in nothing happening until being pointed in the correct direction, but that's about as much mucking with things that I tried to do :-o

Oops, sorry I made you (temporarily) notorious.   

The truth is, this forum develops glitches every so often.  (That's one reason Eich is looking for another host; it wouldn't fix the SMF software problems, but it might fix some issues with overactive bad-word filters.)  It's possible that the problem Owl reported could have stemmed from a problem with her account, not the forum at large or any other poster. 

Meanwhile, did I see in your introduction that you work in network administration?  If so, a secretive group of cyber-superheroes (Eich, Noako, hushpiper, and JoB) may quietly contact you at some point to help answer the Bat-Signal the next time the Forum goes wobbly...

[OrigamiOwl]

Hehehehe it's happened again XD people are now learning the languages of JoB and Piney! As it's probably only on my phone, I can endure it and it goes away eventually: so no fuss needed

[JoB]

people are now learning the languages of JoB and Piney!

[Imagines the two current avatars shown next to each other]

Well, it seems that the glitch has a bit of humor, at least.

[OrigamiOwl]

[Imagines the two current avatars shown next to each other]

Well, it seems that the glitch has a bit of humor, at least.

I know, I giggle when I see it....so it's not a baaaaad glitch at least...

[Sunflower]

Another example of our Forum's (or host's) censor working overtime:
It won't let me say "mail-order b-r-i-d-e-s." 

I discovered this when I was facetiously commenting that my parents think everyone on the Internet is a former Nigerian oil minister with millions of dollars to smuggle out of the country, or mail-order.... uh, beautiful companions from former Soviet countries. 

This problem can probably be worked around if we: 1) Train everyone to copy-and-save their content before trying to post; and 2) Alert people that certain terms popular in spam tend to trigger this bug.  (e.g. "pen-icillin," "V!agra.")

But Eich, now that you're the Ruler of a Derelict Airport, are you still considering a different hosting service?

[Piney]

Hehehehe it's happened again XD people are now learning the languages of JoB and Piney! As it's probably only on my phone, I can endure it and it goes away eventually: so no fuss needed

[Imagines the two current avatars shown next to each other]

Well, it seems that the glitch has a bit of humor, at least.

Oh my god, I'm a language now! I'm flattered ...That's really hilarious imagining those two together.

[Solovei]

Hello code-wizards! I was trying to edit the forum index and would give me a 403 error if I tried to post OR preview it. I didn't actually even change much, just added the links to the tinychat and IRC rooms.

I've spoken about it to Hushpiper and she seems to think it's the sheer number of links in that post that's causing the issue? Is there a work-around for this, or...?

[Richard Weir]

She could be right. A common feature of spam is a huge number of links, so the anti-spam system that bans peni-cillin could well be banning multiple links.

The way round it would be to have more than one forum index post, each with a number of related links. So, say, "Forum Index - SSSS", "Forum Index - Other". Something like that.

[Solovei]

She could be right. A common feature of spam is a huge number of links, so the anti-spam system that bans peni-cillin could well be banning multiple links.

The way round it would be to have more than one forum index post, each with a number of related links. So, say, "Forum Index - SSSS", "Forum Index - Other". Something like that.

I thought about that, but I woud've had to think about that when I was making the post, and "Reserve" a certain number of posts below the first one to edit later as needed. I don't think you can do that after the fact?

[Richard Weir]

A moderator can lock the thread so nobody can reply to it, which will leave it free for you to add extra posts as and when necessary. (Your old thread would need to be deleted to avoid confusion.)

It would be easier if you had moderator status, then you could lock/unlock it at will.

[Eich]

There's no admin setting that limits the number of links allowed in a post, that I could find.  I could try editing your post for you, and if that works, I would know if I missed something when I was searching around.  Do you want to try PMing your update over to me with some instructions?

Also, while I was there, I changed the max number of recipients for PMs to 20, because 10 was rather low.