Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
Since the 20/11/024 forum software update/upgrade (which, IIRC, renamed "conversations" to "direct messaging", even though "personal messaging" is the de-facto standard), there has been an unresolved bug. This was drawn to the attention of the Almighty by DM and in the forum upgrade thread, but without a thread of its own this problem was not drawn to the attention of users... hence this post.
According to the experience of several of us, clicking the "Send direct message" button ALWAYS produces an error message "Oops we ran into some problems". This may or may not be a red herring. If it is a red herring, clicking the Send button again sends the message again, and you get duplicate posts or even duplicate message threads. The only way to find out risks losing your message – so before you check, do the following:
There is a "save draft" tool on the post editor tool bar (far right, floppy disk icon), but it is by no means clear how to recover a draft once the forum thinks you've finished with the editor. Perhaps somebody can expand on that.
Checking depends whether you are adding a message to an existing conversation, or starting a new message thread. If you are adding a message, refreshing the browser will show whether your message has been added or not. I *think* under these circumstances, if the message was not in fact sent, having saved a draft the text will still be loaded in the post editor (drafts are also saved automatically every now and again). In any case, if you have done a precautionary Ctrl+A,Ctrl+C, you have a fall-back.
If you are starting a new message thread, refreshing the browser will not help, except to note that if the message editor blanks then you have (probably) sent the message. What you need to do is check your list of message threads to see whether the thread has been created.
All a bit of a faff.
Originally mentioned (in public) here: https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/forum-software-upgrade-planned-for-20-11-2024.11444/post-176983
According to the experience of several of us, clicking the "Send direct message" button ALWAYS produces an error message "Oops we ran into some problems". This may or may not be a red herring. If it is a red herring, clicking the Send button again sends the message again, and you get duplicate posts or even duplicate message threads. The only way to find out risks losing your message – so before you check, do the following:
Select All (Ctrl+A), then Copy (Ctrl+C). This copies your original message into the paste buffer, so that if you lose it you can Paste (Ctrl+V) it in again.
There is a "save draft" tool on the post editor tool bar (far right, floppy disk icon), but it is by no means clear how to recover a draft once the forum thinks you've finished with the editor. Perhaps somebody can expand on that.
Checking depends whether you are adding a message to an existing conversation, or starting a new message thread. If you are adding a message, refreshing the browser will show whether your message has been added or not. I *think* under these circumstances, if the message was not in fact sent, having saved a draft the text will still be loaded in the post editor (drafts are also saved automatically every now and again). In any case, if you have done a precautionary Ctrl+A,Ctrl+C, you have a fall-back.
If you are starting a new message thread, refreshing the browser will not help, except to note that if the message editor blanks then you have (probably) sent the message. What you need to do is check your list of message threads to see whether the thread has been created.
All a bit of a faff.
Originally mentioned (in public) here: https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/forum-software-upgrade-planned-for-20-11-2024.11444/post-176983