jump_in_the_pit - 08 October 2010 09:27 PM

Yuk!  That anti-spam thing is junk, it is (all but) preventing me from posting a link to a CNN article, and that’s not the first problem.  In engineering tradition, it is a joke to call a bug like that a “feature” if you just write it into the user manual!  Ha Ha Ha!  Turn the bug off until is is functional, please.  Functional means that the filter PASSES all the messages in the history of this forum, that are not SPAM.

I don’t know how the thing works, but if it flags something as spam it is supposed to allow an Admin to let the thing through if it’s not. But since I’m not around 24 hours a day it might have to wait until I’m back.

Let me know what shows up when you try to post. I don’t see anything show up in the spam filter.

I should add that we’ve had transient issues with people posting links in the past. If you just get some error message through the Forum software it may be that same thing again. AFAIK there’s no fix, though it would be helpful if you could send one of us the URL so we could check out the problem.

Doug, I doubt that the system administrators will want to debug this forum at a low level, but here is the work you asked for anyway.

I had intended to send these hyper-links to the forum, but this bbphp forum gave me an anti-spam error message that prevented me from posting the hyper-links:

Chinese official calls Nobel Prize award ‘blasphemy’

Charter 08

(I escaped (encoded) some of the delimeters above, maybe that helps to pass the filter.)

——

I examined the problem a bit, and found that the links would pass the anti-spam filter without the [url] element, if also sent one-at-a-time (2010-10-09 11:30 a.m.):

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/china.nobel.react/index.html?hpt=T1

http://www.hrichina.org/public/contents/article?revision_id=174002&item;_id=173687

——-

The error message is a very simple web page saying (without any forum postings, nor the CFI banner, or anything else but…):

“The form you submitted contained the following errors
Computer says your input might be spam, so it was discarded.

Return to Previous Page”

OK, this’ll have to wait until next week, but I’ll let our system admin know. (Long weekend means it’ll be after Tuesday most likely).

Not sure he can do anything but at least it’ll go into the hopper.

Yup.  I’m not able to link every second thing I try to post.
But, I’ve found that I can still list the URLs as straight text - figuring people can cut and paste.

Though it would be nice to get a little direction on the changes and how we should adjust our posting habits.

citizenschallenge.pm - 09 October 2010 09:55 AM

Yup.  I’m not able to link every second thing I try to post.
But, I’ve found that I can still list the URLs as straight text - figuring people can cut and paste.

Though it would be nice to get a little direction on the changes and how we should adjust our posting habits.

Right, I’ll do what I can.

Interesting how a “feature” that’s supposed to cut down the work of the Administrator seems to be making a great deal more for him. 

Occam

Occam. - 09 October 2010 12:49 PM

Interesting how a “feature” that’s supposed to cut down the work of the Administrator seems to be making a great deal more for him. 

Yeah, let’s give it time and see if this is just normal installation pains or if it continues ...

Well, I learned how to

enclose my quotes[/quotes], so I suppose I can (re)learn how to link…

You know once a protocol is agreed on, it works out.
If we lose the ability to embed links behind labels of our own choosing,
it’s not so bad just posting the URL below the title,
especially since the URLs are being treated as hot links.

I can see where that’s a good thing; right from the git-go you see the address…
no more sneaking The Onion articles in on us poor unsuspecting souls. 

Let me know if other posts get blocked. We just want to do some troubleshooting.