# Post showing up as a blank message

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [July 16, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729 "2008-07-16T19:30:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729/1 "2008-07-16T19:30:44Z")

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[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10009187&postcount=28](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10009187&postcount=28)

Edit or quote it, and you’ll see the text. It’s showing up as a blank message on the board, though.

EDIT: It displays just fine on my vBulletin 3.7 board. Here, though, it shows up as blank.

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**Author:** ![Borborygmi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/borborygmi/32/217_2.png) [@Borborygmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Borborygmi)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729/2 "2008-07-16T19:41:25Z")

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It looks like your whole post is a quote, which the board doesn’t usually let you sumbit without a couple characters of original content. Weird. Maybe it lets you edit a post with a quote to remove the original content, but then won’t actually display it? If that’s not it, I got nothin’.

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**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729/3 "2008-07-16T19:44:41Z")

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We’re having an issue with posts that have unclosed tags showing up blank. Yours doesn’t appear to have that problem. Let me play with it for a few minutes and see if I can figure out the problem…

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**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729/4 "2008-07-16T19:49:16Z")

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I removed the quote tags and it works. I inserted a marker where the quote began. Maybe somebody else can come up with a better fix.

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**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-showing-up-as-a-blank-message/456729/5 "2008-07-16T19:52:01Z")

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It looks like the post is just plain too long. I duplicated the post and tried splitting it in half (pulling part of the quoted material out into a separate post) and it works just fine that way.

You had a VERY long quote in there anyway. I think you’d be better off just quoting a few specific things you’d like to comment on, and then linking to the full transcript.