Having trouble posting a comment here?

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I’ve heard from two readers now who are having problems posting comments on AskWoody. They click to submit the comment, and nothing happens – usually
[See the full post at: Having trouble posting a comment here?]

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Just testing. If you see this appear, it works.

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And I get a ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation’. You can throw away both comments Woody, just testing 🙂

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The comment that it was awaiting moderation went away for me several months ago. I think I sent you an email when it disappeared asking if there was some blocking. Since then,my comment just disappears after I submit, but it shows up when you go through and moderate/post.

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I’ve seen the lack of notice that the comment has been accepted, but given that this is not a forum it’s not easy to come back and check that the comment really appeared. I do usually copy any comment I put effort into to notepad before posting just in case. The first time it happened I tried again and it said “you already posted that”. So I figured from then on that if I hit summit it would get there eventually, even if I didn’t see immediate proof.

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I do get the Awaiting Moderation message, but my posts go through more than 95% of the time. I use Firefox or Chrome browsers, and I normally block ads, but not so much at AskWoody. Windows and Linux work for me. Based in the USA.

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Microsoft is up to it’s old tricks. After I thought I had the update long wait times resolved a new update ‘Office Outlook 2007’ Junk E-mail Filter KB3115110 just sits there and will not download or install.

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I’ve never noticed an issue…

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Yep, you’re the person I was referring to in my post. Glad to hear it’s working right for you! I wonder what changed???

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It works 🙂

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I’ve never had a problem, but will now wait with baited breath in suspended animation while the “awaiting moderation” appears – hopefully!

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In PKCano’s and whomever else’s case could it have smoething to do with TIF’s?

I ALWAYS see the awaiting moderation message and it remains there even if I go elsewhere and return… unless I run CCleaner for some reason to dump the TIF’s & Cookies before closing the browser. Once I dump them and go back to the comment the awaiting message is no longer there.

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As NotReallyBob(fromanothercomputer) wrote, I have had the following happen to me here on Woody’s site one evening about 3 or 4 weeks ago:

“I’ve seen the lack of notice that the comment has been accepted…

I do usually copy any comment I put effort into to notepad before posting just in case.

The first time it happened I tried again and it said “you already posted that”.”

I then wrote Woody a comment explaining that this was happening to me, and apologizing for having posted the very same text about 3 times in a row.

Like Bob, I was also confused that I got a message that said “you already posted that” about my comment, yet I didn’t get the normal notice that the comment had been placed in the queue for moderation — instead, it just disappeared with no trace when I pressed the button.

—–
I don’t know if I was the other person whom Woody referred to in his original post as having flagged this issue up to him, but maybe I was.

Anyway, this only happened to me for about half an hour, a few weeks ago, and since then there’s been no problem.

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If you erase your cookie for this site, the website doesn’t know who “you” are anymore and doesn’t know who to display the unmoderated comment to. As far as the website knows you are a first time visitor who as never posted and should not see unmoderated comments.

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Hello? Hello?! Can you hear me? …Can you read me? If not then I’ll send an e-mail. Pass the word please.

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I presume they realize that you have to click on #of COMMENTS at the top right hand side of the POST and the LEAVE A REPLY pops up at the bottom of the page. You have to scroll down to the end of the COMMENTS to find the LEAVE A REPLY. I know it took me a while to figure it out.

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@Thomas Spero,

I don’t have to do that in order to post a comment here —
I am referring to the procedure that you outlined:
“…you have to click on #of COMMENTS at the top right hand side of the POST and the LEAVE A REPLY pops up at the bottom of the page. You have to scroll down to the end of the COMMENTS to find the LEAVE A REPLY.”

I don’t have to click on anything to leave a new comment here on AskWoody.com, besides scrolling down to the bottom of the discussion thread and typing my comment into the “leave a reply” box that is already sitting there,
or, if I am replying to a post that has been made by someone else, I click the “reply” hyperlink under their particular post and type what I want to say into the “leave a reply” box that appears.

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@rc primak,

The “awaiting moderation” message is the normal outcome, and is what Woody intends. He looks at every message left and approves them on a case-by-case basis.

What he’s talking about in this blog post about problems with his commenting system is situations where commenters have typed in a new comment, but instead of getting the “awaiting moderation” message, their message just disappears with no trace to be seen, and they get no message about it.

Because they assume that a glitch happened and their message was lost and not recorded by the website, they write out/paste the very same comment again into the comment box and press the “submit” button, but when they do that, they get a message saying “you already posted that”!

So the first comment seemed to have disappeared, but then the system won’t allow the second attempt to go through either, while it acknowledges that the first comment WAS actually recorded by the system.

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@Bob(maybe)OrNot,

In my case, when I had the problem folks are talking about here (it happened to me just once, a few weeks ago), I had not erased my cookies for this site during that visit to this site. So I don’t know if that’s the entire reason this happens.

—
If some people who had this issue with posting comments on Woody’s site have had this issue because their cookies were erased mid-stream, why would their second attempt at posting the same comment come back with the error message “you already posted that”? Seems a strange error message to give if the actual problem was that the system thinks that the person is not “logged in” (I realize there is no official logging in, but I mean having typed in one’s email address and username).

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@Woody, when you say to PkCano
“Glad to hear it’s working right for you!”

do you mean that it’s working right if the commenter who leaves a comment does NOT see the “awaiting moderation” message and does not see his/her comment in a temporary placement in the discussion thread,

and instead his/her comment appears to completely disappear (and not be visible in a temporary placement in the thread) as soon as the “submit comment” button is pressed?

To me, it sounds like what PkCano is still experiencing is not the way it generally is supposed to happen here. Of all the times I’ve posted a message here, this weird behavior (of having my comment disappear and not be acknowledged as “awaiting moderation”) only happened to me for half an hour a few weeks ago.

Otherwise, I have always seen my comment in a temporary placement in the discussion thread, headed by a note saying that it is “awaiting moderation”.

Of course, the important thing for PkCano is that it works out okay in the end, if he/she does eventually see his/her comment showing up in the thread, after you (Woody) have checked over that comment and allowed it to be posted.

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It happened to me on a specific post, I don’t remember which and few times in a row.
Once I moved to another post, it worked fine.
I don’t know if it is a general issue, or a specific isolated problem to one specific post/”thread”.

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Yep, I was saying that her comment came through. She’d been having problems previously, now all is well.

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I don’t think the username and email address is key. Not sure what is, though – probably cookies, as you say.

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I think that when the name and email address are not entered, then the post goes through as Anonymous (if it gets approved and published). So this should not be a reason for getting an error. It happened to me before to have few posts published as from Anonymous while changing computers and not entering details.

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Just because we are trying to figure out how it all works, this time is not about a comment not going through. It is rather about comments posted from Chrome, not yet approved (waiting for moderation) but visible from another computer when accessed through Chrome. It still shows “waiting for moderation”, so in theory the comment is not yet approved, although it may be automatically “staged”, like being pre-approved until it is denied. How does this work if I am not signed into Google’s Cloud? This cannot be about cookies, as I access the site from different computers, although using the same browser, which may or may not be relevant.
To me this looks a bit like a (minor, non-critical from my point of view, others can see it differently) flaw in the design of the site, in the sense that if someone else uses the same name and email address, they can see yet unapproved posts of the person posting under that name or/and email address.

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Interesting. That must be a WordPress flaw.

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You can rule out cookies Woody I see the awaiting message when using “InPrivate Browsing” which blocks ALL cookies.

If I leave your site and return later during the same browsing session it’s still there… however, if I run CCleaner and refresh the page the message disappears. The results that show from running CCleaner show no cookies were found and removed, as it should while using InPrivate Browsing.

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@Woody,

Trying to post with Chrome incognito.

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@Woody,

Now that’s astounding, after 4 days of trying and failing to post with Chrome and my normal name and email, I decided to try Chrome’s incognito with a different email…and, voila, I got the awaiting moderation and I assume the comment can/could be approved.

Like MSFT, there’s no rhyme or reason for some things.

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$#@!?????

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This is a test message to see if it will post.

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Weird.

Can’t say that ever happened to me.

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Hopefully everything is still Looking Good here Woody.. Have a Great Summer.. Ron..

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got book windows 10 for dummies. Its great. Issue: 10 books in one and you repeatedly refer to a location in another books. Example: page 665 you say(See Book VII, chapter 1 for details on device..) would be better if a page number. I have to go back to table of contents to find where that book and chapter are. Otherwise, great piece of work.
BTW, this may not be the appropriate place to make this comment but I had trouble finding where to place comments on your web site. I do expect to return often.

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Thanks! If you have a comment that you want to use to start a new thread, email me.

(I think page links would be great, but impossible to implement in anything approaching a reasonable timeframe.)

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Hi Barry – in case you don’t already know it (perhaps it’s published in his book?), you’ll find Woody’s email address on the last line of the following webpage: https://www.askwoody.com/about-woody/

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IE11, not in-private.

I can post here just fine, but only if I make sure my name and eMail are filled-in. If those are missing the post goes into a black hole.

It could be as simple as that.

-Noel

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Strange. I get lots of posts without emails, and one-character names seem to work. I think blank names work, too.

I’m puzzled.

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Or you can click the “mail” icon in the upper left of this page.

It’s woody at ask woody dot com.

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This is a test mesaage

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Got it, loud and clear.

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