Community Posting Errors Explained - And Hopefully Fixed
Some of you have been hitting an error when posting a new thread or replying lately. If you noticed that editing your text a little and trying again made it go through, you weren't imagining things. That was exactly what was happening.
Here is the why. When we moved to the new server in August it came with a security filter that reads every post before it reaches the forum, looking for anything that resembles a hacking attempt. Trouble is, it has no idea what a forum post looks like. A quote, a link, a bit of formatting or just a particular combination of words can look suspicious enough for it to slam the door. Change a word or two and the pattern no longer matches, so the same post sails through. Nothing you wrote was wrong - the filter was being overly suspicious of perfectly innocent text.
We have now told it to leave forum posts alone and let the forum handle its own security (which it already does very well). In theory this fixes the problem completely. In practice we would love your help checking.
If you run into a posting error from today onwards, could you please let us know in this thread? If you happen to remember what you were trying to post (a link, an image, a quote) that would be extra helpful, but no pressure. And if the errors simply stop, well, we'll take the silence as a compliment.
Sorry for the trouble and thank you for your patience while we figured it out.
Here is the why. When we moved to the new server in August it came with a security filter that reads every post before it reaches the forum, looking for anything that resembles a hacking attempt. Trouble is, it has no idea what a forum post looks like. A quote, a link, a bit of formatting or just a particular combination of words can look suspicious enough for it to slam the door. Change a word or two and the pattern no longer matches, so the same post sails through. Nothing you wrote was wrong - the filter was being overly suspicious of perfectly innocent text.
We have now told it to leave forum posts alone and let the forum handle its own security (which it already does very well). In theory this fixes the problem completely. In practice we would love your help checking.
If you run into a posting error from today onwards, could you please let us know in this thread? If you happen to remember what you were trying to post (a link, an image, a quote) that would be extra helpful, but no pressure. And if the errors simply stop, well, we'll take the silence as a compliment.
Sorry for the trouble and thank you for your patience while we figured it out.