LiveJournal PSA

[muckefuck]

Over the past several days of LJ software misbehaviour, I've deleted at least a dozen "extra" replies from various posters to my journal. I know how this happens: You reply and you get a screen saying that the posting action was unsuccessful. So you go back and try again--and get the same screen. Well, here's a little something I've figured out by trial and error:

The screen lies. Often.

I've gotten in the habit of going back to the Comments display and refreshing the screen in order to make sure that my reply hasn't been posted before I try posting again. Even with that precaution, I've been caught out once and had to go back and delete the extra post. (For reasons I've never fully understood, even when I refresh, IE sometimes loads the cached version of the page.)

Also, I've never been more thankful that I developed the habit of copy EVERYTHING I write before submitting the post so that I can repost without having to retype. It's been months now since LJ has screwed me out of a half-hour's work.

(Edit #1: Case in point, this very entry. I posted, got the error, refreshed my LJ, and didn't see it. So I pasted it, made a modification, reposted it, got the error, refreshed my LJ, and then saw the first version of the entry appear. I'm still not 100% sure that the revised entry won't appear at a later date and have to be deleted. Ah, the wonder of it all!

Edit #2: Sure enough, there it is! DIE DIE DIE!!!)

Comments

[astrophysicat.livejournal.com]

You reply and you get a screen saying that the posting action was unsuccessful. So you go back and try again--and get the same screen.
Not on every browser. In mine I press "post comment" and then the little Netscape icon just cycles and cycles, and if I don't press stop in time, it's already posted that comment multiple times on my behalf. It didn't used to do that, it used to be just like you laid out. I feel really bad about spamming your inbox all the same.

IT TOOK ABOUT AN HOUR

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

I want back and was finally able to remove the multiple copies of my response.....sorry for the spamming....

Re: IT TOOK ABOUT AN HOUR

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, Ed, I didn't mean to task you with that. I don't mind deleting the posts myself just to keep the journal tidy, I just thought people might want to know how to avoid future multiposting. (Of course, that's before I found out from astrophysicat that Netscape is even more screwy than IE in this respect.) And it's not like it takes much time to clear the multiples out of my inbox either.

It'll be real nice when LJ goes back to being no more unresponsive and misleading than it usually is.