Thanks for this Dewi, now we know what the new message is about.

It's a relief to hear that there IS a problem....,er, if you see what I mean!

I'd like to just confirm a couple of things:

1) Comments that failed to post are not, and never were, counted in your daily limits.

2) Duplicate post detection relies on hashes ("comment fingerprints") which are recorded *after* posting, so it will never complain your post is a duplicate unless it has been successfully posted previously. People keep complaining that they clicked "reload" a few times, saw this message, and then noticed their comment had been posted, but this is what I would expect if you reloaded one more time than necessary.

However, there exists a race condition bug in the duplicate detection system that has been allowing some dupes through during times of high server load. This will be fixed soon.

Thanks Dewi for giving us updates.
Great job.

Graham,

Hi. Did you notice my comment on Michael Ruse's OLO article being duplicated from Issues?

Realise you might have missed my post there, so excuse me for posting here, where I suspect you monitoring closely.

Cheers,

O.

I'm not sure whether the problem I am about to describe fits within the scope of the posting problems this thread is meant to deal with, but it is a posting problem.

From some time in the afternoon of Sat 10 May until some time just before 11:00 PM on Mon 12 May, although able to log in, I was unable to post to the Forum.

When I clicked on the 'new post' button I would be taken to the log-in dialog page, as normal. I entered my unchanged email address and password, clicked the 'do not set a cookie, I am at a public terminal' option, then clicked the log-in button. I then received a message that I had successfully logged in and that I should return to what I had been doing. So far everything was occurring as normal.

I closed the tab for the log-in page, and was returned to a tab in which the thread was shown. Upon clicking the 'new post' button again, instead of being taken to the posting window page, I would be returned to the log-in dialog page. This was an endless loop. I could not post.

On the third day after onset, the problem disappeared as mysteriously as it had come, without there having been any change in posting procedure on my part. I was subsequently able to make two posts, one on Monday, 12 May 2008 10:56:04 PM to http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1772#35381 , and another on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 9:47:59 AM to http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1684#35398.

When I attempted to post again around 4:00 PM on Tuesday, the problem had recurred.

I had not at any time exceeded any posting limits, nor had my posting rights suspended.

I was able to lodge several feedback reports with OLO whilst unable to make a normal post, and did so.

I was just wondering if any other OLO users have experienced any similar problems but not reported them?