Yes, the hamsters get a little tired sometimes. You craft a great reply in a thread, and submit it, but it doesn’t go through. Your browser says something about timing out, or somesuch. So you resubmit it. Alternatively, after submitting your post, it takes an inordinate amount of time, so you click the stop button, and resubmit your post.
Don’t do that.
Instead, preview your post again. Keep hitting the preview button until it goes through. Then, scroll on down until you see the thread’s replies. Check to see if your post is in there already. Sometimes it will be, sometimes it won’t. If it’s not there, then now you resubmit your post.
Or, if you were starting a new thread, open a new window with the thread view of the forum. Check to see if your thread isn’t already there before resubmitting your post.
The reason is this: just because the hamsters don’t type out a polite response to your submssion, informing you of its acceptance, doesn’t mean they didn’t receive and forward it to the posting monkeys to add it to the board. They’re overworked as it is – sometimes the thank-you notes just fall through the cracks.
That’s great advice. However, it won’t prevent all multi-posts. I posted a reply and never again pushed a single button. Well, except the “x” button on the window becuase after waiting five minutes I decided the hamsters had gone to bed and that I would eventually get the “that page can’t be found” error. It wasn’t an important enough post to sit there for an eternity just to see if had been accepted or not.
So, imagine my surprise when going to that same thread the next day I saw my post in duplicate!
If your browser does not time out after a certain amount of time, I think 4-6 minutes, stop it manually, because it will continue submitting. You can rack up quite a few identical posts by leaving your browser unattended like this.
The best way to avoid multi-posts is to notice that the board is running exceptionally slowly/unreliably, then log off and read a book, or go for a walk in the nice warm sunshine/cool moonlight.
I’m almost certain that for many (possibly nearly all) auto-double-posts (where duplication of click is not involved), there is a corresponding missing post (or missing OP if it happens that way) as a result of the server somehow getting a little mixed up about what it has done and what it should be doing next.
samclem: Okay, well I guess it probably doesn’t happen all of the time. Maybe it’s very rare. But it has happened to me. So, let it spin at your own risk.
I’d also like to add that it’s not necessary to apologize for multi-posting. Everyone knows you didn’t do it on purpose.
Now, the trick is getting everyone to read this thread…
