Post Autosave

[yui 576]

Making this thread because I know @Saikazo won't.

The autosave feature for posts on this forum is a mess, put simply. At best, it works in a really weird and non-intuitive way, which is bad for an autosave. At worst, it flat out does not work half the time. In most sections of the forum, this is no big deal, but in RP - the second-most active section on the site going by post count - this can be problematic unless every post is finished in one sitting. WIP posts from weeks ago will load up for no reason, and posts that are half-finished will disappear with no rhyme or reason behind it. I'm actually posting this thread in response to a case of the latter happening. Twice. On the same post. It's supposed to be a big post too, according to Sai. Having to re-write half of your sizable host post twice and then hope that the autosave function decides to smile upon you the third time if you still can't finish it in one sitting is not okay.

The solution is obviously to make it an actual autosave function instead of whatever weird shit is going on with NCM's attempt at it, but I'm unsure how easy that is to implement.

[Ash 237]

I feel like this needs wider investigation or at least a wider grasp of whom it's happening to and what browsers are being used etc.

My understanding is that the autosaves aren't stored on the site, they are cached instances in your web browser, you can confirm this by typing a reply up and then browsing on your phone or a different browser and the message won't be saved (only on the browser you typed in) this means one of two things, either a) the caching is somehow getting deleted by an extension (pop-up blocker, tracking blocker) and/or application (cc cleaner/malware bytes etc) or b) your browser is not allocating the cached saved message to your web browser instance which seems unlikely as far as I'm aware caches are saved per domain and this site hasn't changed domain.

I've never had this happen to me, in fact quite the opposite the autosave feature has saved me numerous times when I've accidentally closed a tab or restarted my machine and I've forgotten to post a thread and I've not once had any of the issues reported.

I don't think it's anything to do with the site but rather a user by user basis, as I've not had this reported elsewhere.

So first and foremost is if you're writing up an important post (i.e. a long RP reply) don't rely on the site to retain your messages to the letter, the save feature is not intended as a draft feature, it's merely an "oops you forgot this, this is what we've recovered" feature, this isn't a site issue this is a user issue, and I'm sorry to be blunt about it but relying on it to keep hold of your posts that haven't been posted is just a failure on the individuals part.

HOWEVER, it should do its best to retain what it can from a caching perspective but due to the nature of it happening to people intermittently (and only certain people) leads to me believe that it's on their end and not the site, for those it's happening to, I can only request that you do some further testing on the matter, try and draft a couple of posts in a different browser and not your primary (edge/chrome/firefox etc) and use this as your "NCM" driver for a few weeks and see how you get on.

Apologies that this isn't a concrete easy solve but I'm fairly confident that it's not a site issue.

 

 

[LordCowCow 840]

This is an issue I keep hearing but never have had issue with so I find it difficult to figure out how it would go about being fixed.

I'm not sure what's different with whatever I do and what others do to make it so.

[yui 576]

On 12/5/2020 at 3:12 AM, LordCowCow said:

This is an issue I keep hearing but never have had issue with so I find it difficult to figure out how it would go about being fixed.

I'm not sure what's different with whatever I do and what others do to make it so.

I feel like this inconsistency only highlights the issue. I did several tests just now with different procedures, and the autosave properly functioned in all of them, but the "WIP posts from weeks ago will load up for no reason" bit is cited from personal RP experience. I should further clarify that these were WIPs of posts I went on to finish, i.e. posts that have no reason to keep loading up. My current theory is that autosave dropping posts entirely is to do with Google Chrome, since I know Sai uses that while you and I both use Firefox. It could also be tied to word count, since I've had posts drop halfway in before as well, but that makes a lot less sense.