This started something like a week or two ago. Sometimes posts don’t display the username on top. Pic here. There doesn’t seem to be any sort consistency at all, as the same thread will show UserX’s name on one viewing, but not the next. I use a bunch of Greasemonkey scripts, which I’ve had screw up things before, so maybe that might have something to do with it? Anyone else experiencing this? Perhaps useful info:
Scripts used:
[ul]
[li]SDMB inline images[/li][li]Zombies notification[/li][li]The one that changes Shodan’s sig line[/li][li]Avatar script[/li][/ul]
Holy buckets, so I’m the only one? Just now I was reading a thread where most of the usernames didn’t show, then I refreshed and all was good. No one else is experiencing this? People, please, I have no idea how to solve my problems and need help from yous guys!
Smart advice. This was my first thought, but as a lazy asshole, I was hoping someone else was going through this and could save me the trouble of experimenting myself. I’ll tinker, and if I can’t find the source of the problem I’ll be back. Actually, even if I can find the source, I’ll probably be back to whinily suggest that someone fix it. To be continued…
It’s not unknown for two things that work fine individually to give odd results when run at the same time. It could be a clash between the avatar script and something else, although that’s just one possibility.
I have a theory about this. Some of the board’s functions use AJAX by default, e.g. editing and the Quick Reply box. (AJAX is asynchronous Javascript, it’s what lets web sites change stuff without reloading the whole page.) If your greasemonkey scripts are using Javascript functions that also affect how the page looks, those functions don’t get called again when one of the AJAX functions gets used. I battled and battled with this over on my board, trying to write some self-formatting voting tags for Mafia. They kept showing up blank whenever someone edited a post or used Quick Reply. In the end, the only way I could get it to work was to turn off AJAX. (It’s trivial to do, it’s a single checkbox in the AdminCP, but I’m highly doubtful the admins here are going to be interested in changing the software options to support greasemonkey add-ons.)
To test this theory, see if you notice a pattern between using e.g. Quick Reply and the Post Reply button. If I’m right that it’s an AJAX problem, it should never happen w. Post Reply.
The ancient threads that don’t have user names have nothing to do with Winter of Our Missed Content (the names were awol before that) nor was it the switchover from uBB to vBulletin (although that’s closer to the truth).
The board started off using some version (don’t know what) of uBB, let’s call it version X.
Then the board was upgraded to version X+1. Posts made in version X were updated by that process and appeared to be fine under version X+1 but in some unknown fashion they were still “different” which became apparently on when…
The board was switched from uBB to vBulletin. All posts made in uBB were converted by this process. The posts made in uBB version X+1 came through just fine, but the older posts made in version X lost their user names. They were old enough that it wasn’t immediately noticed.
I disabled the scripts one by one and none of them seemed to be the culprit. I find it very bizarre that everything worked just fine until recently. When I clicked on this thread, I couldn’t even see my own name in one of the posts. Harrumph!
Hmm, but it’s not like this only happens when I post with quick reply or edit a post. I just read a thread and notice several of the user names are missing. Gah!
Sorry to hear you’re having problems, MeanOldLady.
We have changed nothing on this end of things, it’s all the same as it’s been for quite a while now.
Intermittent/irregular problems like this are the most difficult to solve in this kind of situation and I regret that we can’t do anything to help you.
Stupid question perhaps, but I assume you’ve done all the usual things like Magic Mr. Reboot and clearing your cookies? That’s two things right there that often makes things right.
OK, that’s pretty weird. Try clearing your browser cache. If it happens after that, with all the scripts disabled, try this:
Go to a page that has missing usernames.
Select View Page Source in your browser (ctrl-U in Windows, probably cmd-U for Mac). This will open a separate popup window with a bunch of HTML.
Search in that page for some text of one of the posts with missing usernames. If you scroll up, you should see the block of code corresponding to the username, title, post count, etc. Here’s mine from my first post in this thread, for example:
<td class="alt2" style="padding:0px">
<!-- user info -->
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="6" border="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td nowrap="nowrap">
<div id="postmenu_15861856">
<a class="bigusername" href="member.php?u=8812">Giraffe</a>
<img class="inlineimg" src="images/statusicon/user_online.gif" alt="Giraffe is online now" border="0" />
<script type="text/javascript"> vbmenu_register("postmenu_15861856", true); </script>
</div>
<div class="smallfont">Charter Member</div>
<div class="smallfont">Charter Member</div>
</td>
<td width="100%"> </td>
<td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap">
<div class="smallfont">
<div>Join Date: Aug 2000</div>
<!- start SDMB modification, jed, 10-04-08 ->
<!- Show additional information for usergroups greater than 4 ->
<div>Location: San Jose, California</div>
<div>
Posts: 9,628
</div>
<!- end SDMB modification ->
<div> </div>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- / user info -->
</td>
</tr>
If you can find and post the source of one of the missing username blocks, it may give us some hints as to what’s going on. Probably not, but it couldn’t hurt to try. (Be sure to post it in [noparse]
Damn it, I thought a good cookie and cache clearing would do it for sure. Nope!
Okay, so I have no idea where to begin and end copying the code from a post, so I tried to just mirror Giraffe’s example, but am still probably screwing this up. Here’s some code that I hope helps from a post that did not display a user name. Many, many thanks.
<td class="alt1" id="td_post_15858249">
<!-- message, attachments, sig -->
<!-- message -->
<div id="post_message_15858249">
I agree, <b>DiosaBellissima</b>. What seems very odd to me was that he was initiating the contact at least 50% of the time, probably a little more, and now, silence.<br />
<br />
Well, I sent a "hey, how ya doin'?" text a few minutes ago. We'll see what happens. But you're right, if I don't hear anything, it will be time to move on.
</div>
<!-- / message -->
<div style="margin-top: 10px" align="right">
<!-- controls -->
<a href="newreply.php?do=newreply&p=15858249" rel="nofollow"><img src="images/buttons/quote.gif" alt="Reply With Quote" border="0" /></a>
<a href="newreply.php?do=newreply&p=15858249" rel="nofollow" onclick="return false"><img src="images/buttons/multiquote_off.gif" alt="Multi-Quote This Message" border="0" id="mq_15858249" /></a>
<a href="newreply.php?do=newreply&p=15858249" rel="nofollow" id="qr_15858249" onclick="return false"><img src="images/buttons/quickreply.gif" alt="Quick reply to this message" border="0" /></a>
<!-- / controls -->
</div>
<!-- message, attachments, sig -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- post 15858249 popup menu -->
<div class="vbmenu_popup" id="postmenu_15858249_menu" style="display:none;">
<table cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" border="0">
<tr>
<td class="thead">jayrey</td>
</tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="member.php?u=136318">View Public Profile</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="private.php?do=newpm&u=136318" rel="nofollow">Send a private message to jayrey</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="sendmessage.php?do=mailmember&u=136318" rel="nofollow">Send email to jayrey</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="search.php?do=finduser&u=136318" rel="nofollow">Find all posts by jayrey</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="vbmenu_option"><a href="profile.php?do=addlist&userlist=buddy&u=136318">Add jayrey to Your Contacts</a></td></tr>
</table>
</div>
<!-- / post 15858249 popup menu -->
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- / close content container -->
<!-- / post #15858249 --><!-- post #15858793 -->
<!-- open content container -->
<div align="center">
<div class="page" style="width:100%; text-align:left">
<div style="padding:0px 25px 0px 25px" align="left">
<div id="edit15858793" style="padding:0px 0px 6px 0px">
<!-- this is not the last post shown on the page -->
<table class="tborder" id="post15858793" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="1" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr>
<td class="thead" >
<div class="normal" style="float:right">
#<a href="showpost.php?p=15858793&postcount=134" target="new" rel="nofollow" id="postcount15858793" name="134"><strong>134</strong></a>
<a href="report.php?p=15858793" rel="nofollow"><img class="inlineimg" src="images/buttons/report.gif" alt="Report Post" border="0" /></a>
</div>
<div class="normal">
<!-- status icon and date -->
<a name="post15858793"><img class="inlineimg" src="images/statusicon/post_old.gif" alt="Old" border="0" /></a>
01-03-2013, 01:15 PM
<!-- / status icon and date -->
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
The problem is actually with the Shodan sig-changing script. It has a bug in it which causes the content of the current page to be screwed up if the alternate signature text does not include the phrase, “poop stain”. Update the text in the script and everything should be fine.
Yeah, you actually wanted the block of code just above what you posted, assuming it was there. Let’s try something easier: can you go to a thread where this is happening, view the page source (ctrl-U), and then just select all text (ctrl-A) and copy and paste it into a Box thread on GB? (Don’t forget to use the code tags.) It’s going to be thousands of lines of text, so I don’t want to spam this thread with it, given that it may not tell us anything anyway. Take note of which usernames are missing, so we can search for those posts.
x 1,000