Status update of forum bugs

by Lee.Koo Nov 11, 2010 2:39AM PST

Hey everyone,

First a quick thank you for all your tremendous patience while dealing with some of our forum bugs while we were in transition to our new platform and our colomove move. We are at the tail end of our gigantic colo move. I believe everything has been moved, but some of our QA (Quality assurance) environments are not quite up and running correctly yet.

Below is a quick update of where we stand with some of our forum bugs. Many of these have been fixed by our engineers, but because we don't have stable QA environments running yet, we are unable to test them before they get release to the public. Once these bugs have been verified fix, they will get deployed to the live forums as soon as possible. Sorry about the delays and thanks for your patience, and I do mean thank you!

FIXED and working now - Typing the word "document" followed by a period and the letter "d" is
automatically transformed into a less than sign (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now - URLs don't hot link if text appears before it (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now - Post preview doesn't work with post over 2000+ characters (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now - Forum posts not appearing in CNET profiles (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now - Total posts counts in thread being off, ie display total counts 7 of 6 (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now- Character encoding issue: "Quotes" and 'Apostrophe' marks show as ? marks. (this is being worked on and this bug is not exclusive to the forums but effects all of CNET user submissions --they will have a patch for all of CNET soon)

FIXED and working now - Message marking read/unread improved performance for forum super users (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now - Forum real activity page going blank after browser refresh (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

FIXED and working now - "CNET Reviews alerts" subject line for Forum Tracked discussion emails (fixed and already deployed)

Outstanding bugs still in queue that are being investigated:

-- Forum search results: Using the "Narrow your results by Spyware, virus and security forum" returns no results.

-- Report offensive post alert submissions emails that include "&" in the optional comment field causes submission failure

-- Emails being bounced back when user submits an Report offensive posts alert

Let me know if I missed anything, with so many bugs I know I failed to mention a few.

Thanks!
-Lee

Note: This post was edited by forum moderator to update all bugs that have been fixed and working in forums now. on 11/17/2010 on 1:48 PM PT

Note: This post was edited by forum moderator to update latest fix. Forum posts in member profiles now fixed. on 11/19/2010 on 11:32 AM PT

Note: This post was edited by forum moderator to update latest fix. Forum posts encoding issue now fixed. on 11/24/2010 on 10:26 AM PT

Discussion is locked

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Profile not showing . . .

by Coryphaeus Nov 13, 2010 4:43AM PST

my posts since September 9th..

http://www.cnet.com/8706-4_1-0.html?username=Coryphaeus&tag=commProfileMain;profileBot

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(NT) Yep, that's #4 in the above 'fixed' list.

by John.Wilkinson Nov 14, 2010 5:51AM PST

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Is there something . . .

by Coryphaeus Nov 14, 2010 7:11AM PST

I don't understand about "fixed"?

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As I understand it

by MDFlax Nov 14, 2010 7:42PM PST

Lee said, "Many of these have been fixed by our engineers, but because we don't have stable QA environments running yet, we are unable to test them before they get release to the public".

The bugs have been fixed, but Quality Assurance testing is not yet complete, so the bug fixes cannot be passed on to the forums software we're using yet.

They're "almost" there,

Mark

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Sorry Wayne, let me clarify .

by Lee.Koo Nov 14, 2010 11:18PM PST

Mark is spot on. But to give you a better understand of how the bug reporting process and handling works, here are the steps:

1. Bug/issue gets reported by you folks or we discover it.
2. We verify it is a bug and we report the issue in details to our engineers by filing a bug ticket.
3. The engineers look into bug and fixes the problem.
4. The engineers then deploys the fix to our internal forum quality assurance environment.
5. We test the fix in the forum QA environment to verified that it is indeed fixed.
6. If the bug is verified fixed, our engineers set up a time to deploy the fix to production (live environment in which you all use.) If the bug is not fixed, the is reopened and it goes back to step #3.

The issue that I mentioned is with step number #5, as our QA environment wasn't running correctly. However, the good news is that we got it fixed last Friday. Hopefully sometime this week, you'll see some of the forum bug fixed.

Hope this helps.

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(NT) Thank you.

by Coryphaeus Nov 15, 2010 1:23AM PST

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by EdHannigan Nov 15, 2010 6:23AM PST

also, possibly other special characters?

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Now wait a minute!!!!!

by Coryphaeus Nov 15, 2010 12:32PM PST

I was here first!! LOLOLOL

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Testing

by MDFlax Nov 15, 2010 7:58PM PST

? from the Character Map

? by using numeric keyboard, Alt + 0169.

They show in the typing box, let's see if they show in Preview and Submit.

Mark

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Nope

by MDFlax Nov 15, 2010 8:00PM PST

Nothing shows.

I agree this is a bug. Perhaps something to do with the quotes and ? problem?

Mark

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How important is this and how often is it used?

by Lee.Koo Nov 15, 2010 11:34PM PST

I believe the system only allows for the common special characters, but not the copyright symbol.

I personally don't see this used much in forums and I would hate to have our engineers add something that is rarely used.

But if you all agree that this is important, then I will file a bug for it. I just would rather have our engineers spend time on more important issues than minor ones like these.

You guys tell me, how important is this? Can you all live without it?

Thanks!
-Lee

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The Copyright Symbol..

by Carol~ Nov 16, 2010 4:00AM PST

'I just would rather have our engineers spend time on more important issues than minor ones like these.'

I couldn't agree more!. <-- IMHO

When posting the news, Trend Micro is the only one who uses it. Thus far, they haven't gotten in touch with me .. due to its absence.

IF they do, I'll be sure to explain why it doesn't exist. No doubt, they will understand.

I presume it also means, I lose the ability to post "bullets". I guess I can live without that too, if it means focusing on more important issues.

Carol

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Agreed...

by John.Wilkinson Nov 16, 2010 5:15AM PST

It could certainly be nice to have full symbol support, but most copy-and-paste is prohibited outside of the V&S alerts that Carol already addressed. For those who need it, we can always use character entities to insert our

© 2010 by John.Wilkinson; All rights reserved.

John

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Your Abilities ......

by Carol~ Nov 16, 2010 8:25AM PST

Your abilities never cease to amaze me.

They've come to be your ...... "Trademark"!

c 2010 by Carol~; Partial rights reserved.

Carol

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(NT) Share your secret John! :)

by Lee.Koo Nov 16, 2010 8:47AM PST

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My secret: HTML character entities...

by John.Wilkinson Nov 16, 2010 9:56AM PST

They don't work in Preview (small forum quirk due to implementation), but your browser will automatically convert them to the corresponding symbol within the post when viewed. Best part: they work just about anywhere regardless of charcter encoding.

One handy reference:
http://www.intuitive.com/coolweb/entities.html

Next week's lesson: making the new forums fit your browser (flexi/dynamic width).

John

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Wow, it works!

by MDFlax Nov 16, 2010 8:16PM PST

And John is scary!!

Carol, and Ed, just type in & copy ; (the last is the semi-colon) but leave no spaces in-between.

©

Mark

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It sure does! Thank you, John. And......

by Carol~ Nov 16, 2010 10:49PM PST

thank you Lee, for suggesting John "share".

My .. ¢ ¢

Carol

PS: John? Now that you divulged this secret, do you have another which will bring back the "Advanced Search"?
Certain keys which need to be pressed? Or maybe I need to switch a different browser??

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Unfortunately, no...

by John.Wilkinson Nov 17, 2010 1:27AM PST

Even if I could access that page, it would still point to the database and software used by the old forums, so it would be limited to posts submitted before the overhaul, and only for as long as they keep (kept?) the database around. Google is my temporary workaround, with something like the following working wonders:

site:forums.cnet.com "John.Wilkinson" "character entities"

John

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And (yet) again, I have to thank you...

by Carol~ Nov 17, 2010 6:41AM PST

I was also using Google as a workaround, but apparently not to its best advantage.

Thanks for showing me the light!

Only one more question....

Can I borrow you? (Meals would certainly be included!)

Thanks again..
Carol

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UPDATE: Post preview with a large amount of text is fixed.

by Lee.Koo Nov 15, 2010 11:35PM PST

More fixes coming soon.

Thanks!
-Lee

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Update of fixes

by Lee.Koo Nov 17, 2010 5:46AM PST

Good news! Here are the list of things that are fixed and should be working now:

Fixed - URLs don't hot link if text appears before it

Fixed - Typing the word "document" followed by a period and the letter "d" is
automatically transformed into a less than sign

Fixed - Forum real activity page going blank after browser refresh (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

Fixed - Total posts counts in thread being off, ie display total counts 7 of 6 (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

Fixed - Message marking read/unread improved performance for forum super users (fixed, awaiting verification in QA)

Thanks!

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Looks like profiles are fixed . . .

by Coryphaeus Nov 17, 2010 8:19AM PST

All my posts are showing.

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Sorry Wayne we had roll that back...

by Lee.Koo Nov 17, 2010 8:52AM PST

Apparently something went wrong and caused all the forums to start timing out.

We will attempt it again, but first we need to figure what cause the forums to start failing because of that profile fix.

Sorry folks.

-Lee

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(NT) Yeah, just noticed, I broke it.

by Coryphaeus Nov 17, 2010 10:48AM PST

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It's back everyone

by Lee.Koo Nov 19, 2010 3:31AM PST

Your up-to-date forum posts are in your profiles once again!!

Woo hoo!

-Lee

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(NT) Yeeehaw! Thanks, Lee!!

by John.Wilkinson Nov 19, 2010 3:59AM PST

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(NT) Thank You! Thank You!! Thank You!!! :)

by Carol~ Nov 19, 2010 5:08AM PST

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(NT) Update Character encoding issue now fixed

by Lee.Koo Nov 24, 2010 2:26AM PST

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Fantastic! It Was 2nd On My (Personal) List of Priorities!

by Carol~ Nov 24, 2010 5:39AM PST

I've been (painstakingly) making the appropriate changes for ALL "said" characters within each news article.

Happy! Happy!

Thank You! Thank You!!

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