Quote and reply functions not working, and page displaying oddly, one thread only

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1

In the Discussion Thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel Thread, and in that thread only, I’m having multiple problems:

The thread is sometimes displaying with text from posts overlapping portions of the page where it shouldn’t be – the banner area and the reply box area.

The quote function mostly won’t work. When I highlight an area to quote, only part of the quote button appears, the rest being obscured behind the post and/or post header; and clicking on the part I can see does nothing.

If I then try hitting the reply button to the entire post, or to the entire thread, that doesn’t work either – nothing happens.

Refreshing the page doesn’t work. Closing the page and reopening it briefly appeared to work, and I was able to get a reply box open; but as soon as I started scrolling down through the thread the problem reappeared. I seemed able to type into the reply box, though sometimes it was obscured by text in the post above it; and if I closed the page and reopened it from the previous earlier point in the thread the box was still there; but the reply button doesn’t work.

I have/had several other tabs open to other pages, same browser, same session; they all are/were displaying normally, quote button shows up normally and works, I was able to post reply in several of them (in the others I didn’t have anything to say.)

If I’ve been banned from posting in that particular thread, nobody’s told me about it, and I don’t know why I would have been. I also didn’t think such bans worked in that fashion.

Can somebody tell me what’s going on, if you know?

– oh yes, it’s Firefox browser on an old Mac system. Other browsers I have aren’t updatable any longer on this system so I don’t really want to try another browser. But it seems unlikely that the browser would work just fine on all the other pages but not on that one.

2

Here is a link to the thread:

I see no problems on a Windows 11 computer in Chrome, using Discourse-Classic Theme.

To check theme:

  • Click on your Avatar next to the Menu. (Upper Right Corner)
  • Select Preferences (The last symbol on the right)
  • Select Preferences again (The gear symbol)
  • Click on Interface. (Should be the last choice.)

It is most likely a Firefox issue handling some stray unusual piece of code, possibly in one of the less used themes.

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Is this the thread you’re referencing? If so, it is working perfectly for me with Firefox and Windows…

4

The thread is clearly working for other people as there are new posts in it.

The theme is Straight Dope Light, which I don’t think is one of the less used, though I might be wrong. And again, other pages in the same browser and theme are working just fine – this one, for instance; but also a number of others.

I can just drop out of that thread, in which I doubt anything I have to say is going to be listened to by the person I want to say it to anyway. But I have a direct reply to me outstanding in that thread, and would appreciate it if someone who can post there would post that I’m unable to reply in the thread because of a software glitch (it isn’t only the person I’d be replying to who I’d like to have that information.)

5

Can you test to see exactly how far down the thread you can go before the problem appears?

Have you tried to view any other fairly lengthy threads?

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The problem seems to be intermittent. Once it’s appeared, it seems to apply to the whole thread. So it’s really difficult to tell whether some particular distance on the page is triggering it; except that it isn’t always the same post. I thought just now that it had disappeared; but it came back before I was able to finish and make the post.

The “discussion thread for the polls only thread”, which is longer, doesn’t seem to have the problem – but I don’t know whether it might develop it if I tried to read a large number of posts in the same session. – nope. I just paged up and then down again over a hundred posts in that thread, with no sign of any of the symptoms; and then quoted and replied in that thread as a test with no problems. I admittedly paged up and down somewhat faster than I would have if actually reading them all; but sometimes just paging up has triggered it in the thread in question, and while I don’t know the exact number of posts and am pretty sure it’s varied significantly I’m sure it’s always been less than a hundred.

7

Okay, I did just finally manage to finish and post in that thread, including posting that I’ve been having problems with it. If/when the problems recur, I’ll most likely just not post there. If the problems start occuring in any other thread, I’ll come back here and say so (presuming, of course, that this thread doesn’t develop the same problem! in which case I think I’ve got WE?'s email address somewhere.)

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@engineer_comp_geek @What_Exit

Now this is getting really weird.

The problem reappeared in the thread I was originally having it with, and I managed to get a post in saying that and then stopped replying in that thread. I can read it, though occasionally with a bit of difficulty due to the text overlapping the banner; usually the problem’s not apparent, occasionally it is.

No other threads have had the same problem. I’ve posted in a number of them. No difficulties. Until –

I went to read a new thread. Different thread. Short thread. Brand new thread. Different forum –

Same general topic.

And almost as soon as I started reading the thread Discussion for the Israel-Hamas War: A thread in the Pit: there goes the text overlapping the banner. I tried a bit of quote in an experimental fashion. Same problem.

The originating post in that thread doesn’t appear to have been copied from the first thread I had the problem with. So I don’t think that whatever’s causing it has somehow copied over with it; except that I can’t see what else could have happened. (Well, aside from somebody coming up with some really strange way to prevent me, but not anybody else, from posting on that one particular subject; but even if that’s possible, I can’t imagine why.)

I don’t need to post in the Pit thread. I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to post in the Pit thread. I just think this is strange enough to comment on.

9

Now I’m seeing it in the thread “Why isn’t 2024 more like 1968”?

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That thread just let me post, as long as I didn’t quote; it wouldn’t let me quote, and was exhibiting the overlapping-text issue. The issue as I described it previously wouldn’t let me post, either; the reply buttons weren’t working.

No, Discobot, I couldn’t have combined this post with earlier ones, because it contains information I didn’t have while within the edit window for earlier ones.

11

Just to note that this is still happening, frequently in that thread though not continuously, and occasionally in several other threads; though, at least so far, never in most of them.