Why are my comments disappearing?

August 21, 2000 9:04 PM

I've been noticing recently that some of my posts have been vanishing. I don't assume deliberate deletion on the part of the owner of the system since in many cases they aren't particularly controversial comments.

Most recently, there is a thread about a blind woman nudist who's going to compete in a power lifter contest. I posted one brief post which was a joke, but followed it immediately by a longer one where I stated that I actually respected her a great deal for not letting her handicap keep her from living exactly the life she wants to.

That second post is gone. I have no idea why. I posted it and saw it, but when I went back later and visited, it was missing. I think maybe it may have gotten lost by the database or something.
posted by Steven Den Beste to Bugs at 9:04 PM (4 comments total)

For a while, I thought maybe what had happened is that after pushing the "review" button I had forgotten to post the "post" button. But recently I've been extra careful to always do so, and I've always checked afterwards to make sure the article is present.

What's puzzling about this particular one is that it was actually there -- and now it's gone.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:31 PM on August 21, 2000

Steven, I assure you, I didn't remove that post. Let me go look at the thread and try to figure out what went wrong.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:31 AM on August 23, 2000

Steven, looking into the database, I don't see any comments made by you later on in the same thread. I have been tweaking my admin tools, so there's a very remote chance I accidentally deleted the comment, but I doubt it. Are you absolutely sure it was posted after previewing? If so, I'll have to check the server security a bit more.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:42 AM on August 23, 2000

I don't know what the story here turned out to be, but it got me thinking ...

perhaps a new preference could be a 'confirm abandoned posts' checkbox -- off by default. it would affect current users -- they wouldn't even know it was there unless they delved into the options page. if checked, users would have a javascript "Leave/Cancel" dialog scripted into their post pages which fired on unLoad or something.
posted by sudama at 8:33 PM on September 5, 2000