Issues with embedded URLs while editing posts

marikakis · ‎02-22-2009

Hello,

I don't know if this can be classified as an idea. Still, lately when I try to edit a post and I have a URL embedded in it, the URL appears in a weird format and sometimes it can appear multiple times, depending on how many times the post has been edited. I am not sure when this started happening. I think it's there for at least a month now.

I don't know about other people, but I edit my posts quite often. I do try to post the best I can from the beginning, but sometimes some additional ideas come to me and I want to avoid a different post for clarifications, especially if the additional post needs to include a lot to point to the exact point in previous message where the additional material applies. To handle this issue I copy paste from my initial post instead of using the ready old text of my post provided by the "edit" facility.

And just to make this post a little bit more of an idea: I think a sign that says "this post has been edited by author" would be helpful for readers to realize a post they read earlier has changed. Sometimes people say they edited their posts and sometimes they forget to mention it or do not think the change is very important.

Kind Regards,

Maria

p.s. It seems I am editing even this one! Thankfully I had no URLs embedded. ;-)

Each post has a timestamp on it (e.g. Feb 21, 2009, 4:48pm PST). There could be another timestamp that says: last edit at e.g. Feb 21, 2009, 4:58pm PST. Posts cannot be edited after some time passes (30 min), so the additional timestamp could take advantage of the old timestamp if this makes the associated storage overhead lower.

scottmac · ‎02-24-2009

Maria:

The forum uses an advanced extension of Cisco's ACL editor ... some practice, some of that sneaky kind of education Cisco is famous for ;-}

j/k, of course.

The screams you may hear are those of people that spend 31 minutes (or more)responding/editing the finest answer ever provided on any forum anywhere with no 'notepad' (or EditPad Pro) backup available ...that never get posted out of frustration over the loss.

I'm still curious "why limit the time," and "why only 30 minutes?" ... but I learned the hard way; anything that looks like it's going to run more than a paragraph or so is done in an external editor and copy & pasted into the editor.

When you get old & windy (like me), you have to do what you have to do ;-)

Good Luck

Scott

marikakis · ‎02-25-2009

Scott,

I have "lost" some posts I was editing, but that happened only a couple of times about 5 years ago. I am not sure if those were very fine. I am sure they were not, because I want to ignore the fact that my memory fades with time, and I instead prefer to believe that I learn more as time passes :-)

Still, to be on the safe side, I keep 2 backups: the last post from home and the last from work. I just prefer to write directly into the forum editor because I have a better sense there about how my post is going to look after it has been posted. When I sense that my post gets lengthy (woman's post, what can you expect? :-), I actually copy from the forum editor to notepad and not the other way round :-)

I am not familiar with the evil features that are causing this issue, but if you are right, then I suppose I will have to live with it. Still, I think that a last edit timestamp might be useful for people to realize that somebody changed their answer. I have done this in the past because I detected a different logic in my post than the one I intended, and I caused confusion to Rick. I actually have detected a couple of other cases with changes that were (how can I describe this? ok I found it) looking to the future like an astrologist or something. Of course, one case say : [Edit], but if I was doing this everytime I edit a post, I would have to change my username to edit_edit instead :-)

Kind Regards,

Maria

[Edit]: If people edit their posts, even with good intentions, some follow up answers look like they are repeating something that has already been said.

marikakis · ‎03-08-2009

It seems to me that the issue with embedded URLs does not exist anymore. At some point almost a week ago, I noticed some URLs appearing somewhat broken in the post after it has been posted (different issue than the one I described), although there were no issues while editing, but now it seems everything is working fine.

Daniel Bruhn · ‎03-09-2009

Hi Maria,

You're correct. The embedded url issue has been fixed. It was caused by a release we did about a month ago and we had to create a fix. I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

Cheers,

Dan Bruhn

NetPro Community Manager

Cheers, Dan

marikakis · ‎03-09-2009

Dan,

I suppose since you had at least this issue to fix, I shouldn't be asking for more features! Poor developers, everybody asks them to do more work, so that everybody else can do less work :-)

Kind Regards,

Maria