# Reading too-long posts **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [November 13, 2000, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926 "2000-11-13T00:29:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_Who](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c2a13f/32.png) [@The\_Man\_Who](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_Who)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2000, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/1 "2000-11-13T00:29:54Z")
I was recently attempting to read the old “Bricker Challenge” posts and was enjoying them. However, when I got to the post in the thread which was supposed to have the answers to the quizzes, it cut off at about the 25th answer or so. It was like this on two or three of the posts. Here are a couple of the posts in question: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=19203](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=19203) [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=20478](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=20478) Is there some sort of setting so I can read the entire post, or has a glitch wiped out these responses forever? Thanks. Cordially, Myron M. Meyer The Man Who ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_Who](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c2a13f/32.png) [@The\_Man\_Who](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_Who)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2001, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/2 "2001-03-11T03:34:49Z")
Bumping in hopes of getting a response. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![OneChance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/74df32/32.png) [@OneChance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneChance)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2001, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/3 "2001-03-11T05:20:57Z")
I would’ve posted this sooner, but damn this message board is slow. Anyhoo… The box you type your posts in, the textarea box, is generally limited to about 32KB of data. You can find more info about it here: [http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/textarea.html](http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/textarea.html) What people should do is break their long posts into parts. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2001, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/4 "2001-03-11T05:24:27Z")
I did not see this the first time around and I do not know why, my apologies. Every once in a while a thread does get past me. I just looked at the threads you mentioned, and they look fine. All the answers are there. Please try reloading and hit “Cntrl” + “Refresh.” See if that helps. Sorry to hear you’ve had trouble. your humble TubaDiva Administrator ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2001, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/5 "2001-03-12T00:03:11Z")
That’s odd. I get the truncated posts too, even after using ctl-reload and Netscape. I notice those threads are from the UBB days before we converted to vBB. I also did a cut and paste of the visible text of Arnold’s posts from the screen and from the html sources. I thought if the lengths matched between the two threads, that would be a clue. No such luck, of course - they’re close, but not an exact match. This is like what happened when I first tried to display the Lizzie Borden column (I can display it okay now). Here’s the [ATMB thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=62862) where I reported it). Okay, so there’s some **identical** peculiarity somewhere between the SDMB and the PCs of Soda, TMW, and me, but nobody else? Riiiiight. 🙂 For the record, I’ll summarize my system specs again: Gateway Pentium II system, Windows 98, IE 5.5 and Netscape 4.72. I also use AOL 6.0, but I connect to it through my ISP via TCP/IP. Thanks for your attention, Tubadiva, oh excellent and long-suffering administrator. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2001, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/6 "2001-03-12T00:42:24Z")
I think the Lizzie Borden thing was messed up because of something Ed did, he reposted the article and all was fine. So that’s explained. As for the others, I dunno. I’ve seen it a couple of times myself and found when I refreshed the page, all was fine. I don’t know what causes it or what fixes it. your humble TubaDiva Administrator ---
**Author:** ![OneChance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/74df32/32.png) [@OneChance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneChance)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2001, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/7 "2001-03-12T01:02:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by zgystardst \* > **Thanks for your attention, Tubadiva, oh excellent and long-suffering administrator.** Her attention?! Sheesh, I post an informative answer complete with link and am completely ignored. TubaDiva, if you bothered to look closely at the posts that are truncated, you’d see that they have about 32KB of data. Once the message is truncated by the poster’s browser, no amount of refreshing or reloading will help. Different browsers have different limitations on how much data in a textarea can be processed. Some browsers might not have any limitations, but most do. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecccb3/32.png) [@Lord\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2001, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/8 "2001-03-12T01:21:10Z")
**zgystardst** , I don’t think the problem you reported concerning the Lizzie Borden thread is the same as this. The problem you reported corrected itself, indicating posibly a database error of some sort or caching problem. The problem in the OP was discussed in this thread, [Who is “reg | guest”?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=59399) about a month ago. I don’t think **TubaDivaDarlin’** realized that it was the same problem and thread already reported. She said it was a conversion problem in that thread. If you do a search on the poster named **“reg”** , you’ll find that there are 236 threads that the magical poster showed up in. All imediately following a long post that is cut off before the end. I agree with **tshirts** that it was probably some kind of buffer overflow problem in the conversion. Jim ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecccb3/32.png) [@Lord\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2001, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reading-too-long-posts/40926/9 "2001-03-12T01:26:02Z")
**OneChance** , you are probably right about where the limitation comes from. The posts were complete in the UBB software, the conversion is when they got lost, though. Jim