Metafilter is eating my comments! March 10, 2003 10:34 AM   Subscribe

Metafilter is eating my comments! I click on "Preview" and on the next page, I get "Comment Preview" and no comment underneath. The only thing that appears underneath is the line of links: Home About Archives, etc.
posted by meep to Bugs at 10:34 AM (14 comments total)

EAT ME!



just testing...
posted by quonsar at 10:39 AM on March 10, 2003


ok. the next obvious question is what browser/OS are you using, meep?

also, have you ever considered a meep@meepzorp.com address? one might be arranged for you...
posted by quonsar at 10:42 AM on March 10, 2003


Well, have you considered this might be an elaborate trap to get access to meepzorp's corporate servers?
posted by yerfatma at 12:16 PM on March 10, 2003


did you try logging out and back in first?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:18 PM on March 10, 2003


Are you sure this is a bug? It might be a feature.

sorry, that was too easy
posted by eyeballkid at 12:27 PM on March 10, 2003


Netscape 7/Win98: I've logged out and back in, and I could post to the Albini thread fine, but I still can't even preview in the Polanski thread. Just hangs on the "sending request to Metafilter.com" part, every time, for over 10 minutes now. It's a good post, too.
posted by dhartung at 12:46 PM on March 10, 2003


Even weirder: I found a way around it by posting in 1000-byte chunks (maybe there's some sort of packet thing involving 1002 bytes of text plus ancillary doohickeys). But now I can't even do that.
posted by dhartung at 1:14 PM on March 10, 2003


Start a new thread for all your ongoing comments in MeTa, and just make a note of which MeFi thread you are responding to. We'll come over here and check periodically for updates. Start a new one every thirty days.
posted by jonson at 1:59 PM on March 10, 2003


Heck, I tried posting OS/browser info earlier as a comment, and Metatalk ate my comment as well.

So let's try this again.

I'm on a Mac G3, running MacOS9.2, browsing on Netscape 7.0.
[on preview... woo! no more eating! I suppose that logout/log on trick really works.]
posted by meep at 2:19 PM on March 10, 2003


Meep, I'm not a computer expert, and I don't even use a Mac, but speaking from experience, 99% of problems I've ever had in a browser have been solved by simply clearing the cache. Might try that.
posted by Hildago at 2:58 PM on March 10, 2003


My problem wasn't cookies (logged out), cache (cleared it), browser (restarted it, switched from Netscape 7 to Netscape 6 to IE 6 {freestanding} to IE 6 {within AOL}). It seems to have been AOL, maybe because I'm in their Client Beta program. Anyways. I've never seen anything remotely like it. And let me tell you, trying to get around it basically consumed my afternoon.

And yes, meep, the logout thing pretty much usually works, for MeFi.
posted by dhartung at 7:31 PM on March 10, 2003


dhartung, it sounds like you're having a problem with Path MTU Discovery. While it can be somewhat mysterious, the solution is quite simple: lower your MTU manually (OS X instructions) until it starts working correctly; an MTU of 1412 should work with almost any sort of internet connection. If you're running Windows, there's even a program that'll save you the trouble of running regedit to make the changes. Finally, if you've got some sort of broadband router, then you might be able to configure it to enforce a lower MTU instead, which will also fix this problem and has the advantage that it will fix it for all computers hooked to your local network.
posted by boaz at 9:55 PM on March 10, 2003


That would be a good call, except as stated, I'm using AOL -- which provides its own internal TCP/IP stack, AOLsock. (There's a similar tweak found here.) I've reinstalled the non-Beta AOL 8 and seem to be having no problems so far.

I may, however, do some performance testing later to see if the tweak works with the newest client. That guy's page hasn't been updated in four years!
posted by dhartung at 3:57 PM on March 11, 2003


While I haven't seen AOL in years, I seem to recall that they provided internet access to external apps using a special network adapter called something like the 'AOL adapter'. You should be able to lower the MTU on that adapter using the Dr. TCP app I linked to (it should appear in the popup in the Adapter Settings area), which should at least help with external apps if not AOL's embedded browser. Still, I haven't used AOL since version 4.0 so take this with a grain of salt.
posted by boaz at 7:42 PM on March 12, 2003


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