Vanishing Comments
Hi community, I think this is probably one for the mods, but any insight is very welcome.
I've noticed for the past couple of months a blink and you'll miss it pop-up when posting comments saying 'Your comment will appear after it is approved' and then, generally after a day or so, my comments do appear. But I've left two comments in the last week that just haven't appeared at all.
The posting lag does hamper realtime discussion, but it's manageable. Comments disappearing into the ether altogether though is frustrating.
Is there any known reason this might be happening? I've done a search of the forums and see this has come up some years ago, but nothing current, and there was no definitive answer back then that I could see.
The comments are benign in content and in line with the code of conduct so there's no obvious reason for them to be denied, which makes me wonder if there's a bug of some sort?
These last two comments were posted in groups, if that makes a difference, but I have experienced this in the general forums previously as well.
Best Answer
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@mynameistk I really appreciate you taking the time to look into this for me. Thank you. I meant to post an update here yesterday but I ran out of time. I had a mod reach out to me via direct message. Apparently what has been happening is my comments and posts were being sent to a holding area of the community for individual approval. The reason why is unclear. As you found, I haven't been posting trigger words or multiple comments at a time. But some behind the scenes solution was tried and it seems to have resolved the issue. Fingers crossed it'll stick! The why of it all may just stay a mystery. I really appreciate the work you and others put in to solving the issue, thank you.
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Good morning. Since you have self diagnosed most of the issues causing discussions to be removed I would recommend the usual. See the article on trouble shooting your browser. The usual problem appearing is the need to clear your cache and cookies. It fixes most of my issues like this one.
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@RaniM thank you for using the Community for feedback. Could you tell me a little more about this issue? In which groups were your "unposted" comments? This may be a "bug" that would need to be addressed, but I would like to see if I can help flush it out. It is disconcerting when you don't receive any answer to a question, but to not even see the comment is more troubling. Please post your feedback in this discussion. Thank you.
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@sc woz Thanks for your suggestion. I will give the ol' clearing the cache and cookies trick a try. It's a good thing to do on the regular regardless. Though in this case I'm not sure the issue is with my computer as I have since tried posting via different devices and the problem stands.
Interestingly, after this post was approved (it also received the 'Your post will appear after it is approved' treatment) the two most recent missing comments appeared. Almost like they'd been stuck in limbo and the approval of this post shunted them through.
@mynameistk I appreciate you investigating. Thank you. The two comments in question were in Scotland Research on THIS post and in Wales Research under the post "Wales 1662 Will - Words Before Names I Cannot Understand" (which for some reason I'm unable to link here).
As I said, the comments have since appeared but for the one in the Scotland Group there was a lag of about 6 days and for the one in the Wales group slightly less. It's also happened previously when commenting under posts in the general section and at least one of those never reappeared, I had to retype and resubmit my comment, so I don't think its an issue exclusive to posting in groups.
Holding my breath that this comment eventually appears!
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@RaniM Several of us have been looking into this. Several possibilities come to mind. If you post several comments in succession, said comments might be flagged as "spam" and must be reviewed individually. Often, certain words trigger a flag, but we didn't notice any of those words in your comments. Others are still looking into this. Please continue to post questions and to add comments while it is being looked into.
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