Assorted board quirks

In the Another question for the owners/adminstrators of this board: Replacement Cecil thread:
Where did my post go? Post time was 03-30-2002 01:27 PM GMT, if it helps.
It was there, now it’s gone. And merrily’s running gag ran away, too!
In the Why do straws have stripes on them? thread I’m sure there was no Kniz when I started my reply. That post appeared while I was still previewing mine. Yet my post is in front of it.

Is the time (and therefore their order?) of the posts set at “post reply”, updated (or not) with every “preview”, or when you finally “submit reply”? Did the board rely on my maladjusted computer clock (few minutes)? Was it a glitch or a ‘feature’?

:thinks: Does that mean I can start a reply, (preview once in a while to keep the cookies warm?,) wait for someone to post, wedge a post in front of him, and appear to be clairvoyant?

Sorry, but the database sometimes gets incompletely updated, especially at times of high activity.
I would think that the post time gets set when you press “submit reply” and not before. But I will try to find out the definitive answer.

I found out the vBulletin 1.1.3 software quite simply called a current_time()-routine at every single point when a timestamp is needed. I don’t guess they changed it since that version.

So times in different lists may be inconsistent if the server is bogged down between two code lines that update the post database and the forum list, for instance.

If I got it right, the post time is set at the very moment the server processes the code to set the post time. D’oh!

Thanks a bunch, anyway!