Why do I lose posts?

[RMSteele]

Hello chaps, I have no problems posting shortish messages but when I try to post something that's several paragraphs long, it disappears when I press submit, then I am asked to login - which I do - and still nothing appears in the topic page. Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong. Spent 3 hrs this evening composing a post online but it disappeared when posted. Shamefully, I've only just noticed the save draft button! But apart from that I'd still like to know what I'm doing wrong. All suggestions welcome, Bob

[joe]

Hi Bob,

I'm very sorry that you wasted all that time, I know how frustrating that must have been. I'm really not sure why that happened. I had a quick look at settings and there are no time limits or word limits that might account for it. I will flag it up to "those who know." Obviously, it's now advisable to compose long posts outside of the forum and copy it in so that it's there if the same thing happens again.

It's odd because there are other long posts in the forum - although I seem to remember that Cliff experienced disappearing posts from time to time.

[Alastair McBeath]

This seems to have been a common problem for quite some time, as back when I was still Meteor Director (pre-early 2012), I used to prepare any longer posts well ahead of time offline, then just copy and paste them into the Forum when online. That was because I'd also lost a couple of longer posts I'd tried to type in "live", and taken too long over them.

[RMSteele]

Thanks Alastair, I've now successfully recreated it and copied and pasted it to the forum. These things happen. I think it may simply be a time-out issue. Sometimes these online systems seem to kind of go to sleep on you if you're a slow coach like me and stay on a page for a long time Thanks chaps, Kind thoughts Bob

[mike a feist]

On occasions, while writing something which takes sometime to complete, esp if I am interrupted, I have sometimes posted the first bit and then add "more to follow later" ...then later I can go back in and edit and add.maf.

[Robin Scagell]

There is a 60,000 character limit on each post, but you would be hard pressed to reach that limit -- it is equivalent to a substantial short story. I think the timeout explanation is the best one, though I can't find a setting to change this straight away.

Robin

[Cliff]

Dear al(L)
It's ironic that this topic by Bob just cropped up now and Joe mentioned Cliff (ME) had similar problems in the past because I am just in the process of organising another "longish" post to put on the forum now. I previously eventually came to the conclusion I was having "time out" problems like Robin suggests - because amongst other things I am a very slow typist. So I will be sending my introduction to my new topic in two or three separate posts -and hope I get away with it ???
Best of luck to Bob & me as well !!!! from Cliff