Post your commenting problems here
Any issues with the updated comment system, post here.
UPDATE(June 4): We have increased the comment text font size.
And also note you can now edit your comments after posting. If you select your comment you’ll see a cog icon bottom right, click on it and you have the edit option. You can edit your comment for fifteen minutes after posting.
We have also added a “read more” function on longer comments to speed up comment loading. Any issues you have with that should be reported below
UPDATE (June 6): We have disabled the ‘read more’ feature again as it was causing issues for some people
UPDATE (June 9): We have fixed an IP issue which may have been preventing some people voting for comments.
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Please keep these threads exclusively for commenting issues and any related problems. If too many extraneous conversations get started that can make it easy to miss relevant posts.
Thanks
Why provide an edit option , that does not work?
Jim,
It used to work a bit, and they tried this years ago for a bit.
However, this is just a blog. Say what you mean the first time you write it.
No one is bothered about typos, and not that bothered if you write bollocks when drunk.
If you are that worried about it, just think what it is like, if you are on stage with a large audience, who can see you, and maybe even touch you, and you ad-lib. You are not following any script. You just say what you think, and the cameras are there – cos you are a person of interest, or you wouldn’t be up on stage…
You can’t edit that can you?
You may well regret saying what you said, but you can’t unsay it, and it may well be held against you, and you may well end up in a load of sh1t.
No one is perfect. We all f’ck up.
We are human.
We are now being controlled to not say what we think.
This is highly dangerous, and sometimes results in violence and death, when no offence was intended.
Tony
“We are now being controlled to not say what we think.”
It’s not stopping you, Tony.
because it does work, it’s just time-limited.
It sometimes takes several goes to get you back to the original writing screen. In that time, though, often you could have looked back over what you’ve written.
How does it not work for you?
I wanted to add a sentence, but could not?
Duplication of posts when editing. Several times when editing a word or line the whole text has duplicated… This morning I got three copies of the text, all within one post.
When doing an Edit/Save the software seems to automatically add three or more lines of empty space below the post. When saved, this means the post has a large area of white space beneath it which you then have to go back in and delete.
I am not talking about space which the poster may accidentally enter, by creating extra lines with the ‘Enter’ button during the initial post. I mean space which inserts itself only when going back to edit a post.
I’m getting a lot of messages telling me that I can’t vote for a particular comment (or that I’ve already voted for it, when I haven’t done so). The problem seems worse today than it’s been on other days.
Hope all at Off-G are well.
Comment-editing seems a bit erratic today (Monday 8 June 2020 15:20 BST ).
Lets me go into comment-editing , but not save it.
And this was very soon after posting the comment – the 15 minutes or whatever should not have elapsed. The cogwheel was still showing. Happened more than once.
Probs with up/down voting … thinks I have already voted …… when I most certainly haven’t.
Admin getting some issues posting comments, if i try to post more than 2 comments in the same thread nothing happens. I press post but nothing works. I have to f5 the page but then i lose which comment I was replying to LOL.
Try refreshing after posting each comment – if it keeps happening report back
Ya know what the f5 key does š
Yes, I am suggesting you do that BEFORE trying to post another comment so you don’t lose anything. But I realise I misread your original comment
Test
Test
Yeah, that needs fixing š¤¦š»āāļø
Test Reply 3
Test Reply 4
Two problems with this comment: https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/06/coronavirus-fact-check-6-does-wearing-a-mask-do-anything/#comment-187229
I tried to format the dialogue as a blockquote, in hopes of condensing or minimizing the spaces between the lines and making the comment neater. This embedded blockquote is unlike the standard HTML tag version I’m familiar with; when I applied the tag, weird gray graphics resembling oversized apostrophe marks cluttered the background.
When I posted it anyway, the results were embarrassingly the exact opposite of what I’d hoped or expected; for some reason, each line is isolated in a separate blockquote– in italics, no less. This is a really peculiar and frankly weird result; if this is the way it’s supposed to work, I’ll just stay away from it in the future.
I immediately tried to edit out the blockquote, and tidy up the text. After my labors, when I tried to save the fixed version I got an error message along the lines of “this comment can’t be edited”. I may not have the exact words, but I tried clicking the “Save” button several times, and kept getting that red-framed “can’t edit” message.
I don’t know if this is a subliminal KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) message from the software designer. š Anyway, I hope that this odd blockquote can be tweaked to behave like standard HTML blockquoting, which presents blockquoted text in, er, a single block of normal text which can be augmented with italics, bold, etc. according to the writer’s preferences.
Also, is there a “delete comment” feature I’m not seeing? If there are technical limitations to editing comments, I should think that a delete option would be available to remove comments with botched formatting. Thanks for your attention.
Maybe you exceeded the time limit for editing your comment (15mins)?
We are looking into the blockquote issue
Thanks. I was so bothered by the weird blockquote that I took time fussing with my would-be improved revision– it didn’t feel like it took longer than 15 minutes, but it’s possible.
Live and learn. I would’ve wrongly assumed that the time “window” only applied to the edit function being available, i.e. if one opens the edit window within the allotted (but undisclosed until now) time limit, one could edit at one’s leisure.
Now that I know the clock is ticking, I will take it into account.
As a non-technical person, I constantly suffer from the strain of trying to suppress the curioso-reflex to “reason why” in Internet-related software matters. I appreciate this site’s attentive and considerate feedback, but it’s obvious that in general, software design is authoritarian, and end users are decidedly “not to reason why”.
Predictably enough, in my childlike way I would argue for a longer time to edit; also, while I can think of reasons why a “delete” feature would be arbitrarily and capriciously abused, some platforms seem to allow it. Sorry for venting, and thanks again.
FYI, ironically I just now attempted to edit in the postscript below to my previous reply; it took about four minutes to compose, but I got the same “can’t edit” error message– I most definitely didn’t exceed the 15-minute limit.
_____________________________________
PS: a quick edit š the minor issue of votes appearing on new comments where I have not cast a vote persists. The workaround reported by some of simply attempting to vote repeatedly doesn’t work.
Of course, here again is a paradox of sorts: if I intended to upvote a comment, and an upvote is already displayed, I suppose there’s no need to cast a “fresh” vote– but it’s still confusing and mildly disconcerting.
Ok, we will add to the list
Admin
I am finding that I seem to intermittently get two different messages when I try to vote on other people’s comments. About 80% of my votes succeed. But I have been getting at various times “You have already voted” when I truly know that I haven’t, or “You are not allowed to vote on this comment”. I seem to receive this second message when I am trying to upvote a reply to me from someone else. In both cases I have been able to vote on comments either side of the ones triggering these messages.
I think this might be an IP issue. CloudFlare assigns proxy IPs randomly to site visitors as a security measure, but when there is a lot of traffic that can mean several visitors are allotted the same IP, and this may be causing the problem.
There is a workaround. We will try it and see if it clears up this issue.
Thanks, Admin1.
I see a similar problem. I don’t think I get as high a rate as 80% of votes succeeding (first time), but some do.
What I typically get is an error message the first time I vote. If I try again, it sometimes works. If it doesn’t, I keep trying, and it usually works eventually.
If it’s the IP problem you mention, and you’ve tried the workaround, well, as of 1420 BST on 7 June 2020, there is still a problem.
Since I posted the above yesterday my vote success rate has diminished seriously. This morning I was systematically working through comments on the two most recent articles and was getting the message that “You have already voted” to at least 50% of my attempts. Even when I try again, or leave it for a few minutes and return, I get the same message. I was also still intermittently getting the message that I wasn’t allowed to vote.
Neither of these is a major concern to me, just frustrating, and I can still post a comment or reply. But I wanted to mention it so that Admin1 is aware that the problem is still persisting.
If it’s of help, I am using Google Chrome.
That issue is on the list and we will try to get to it tomorrow
We have fixed the IP issue ā so let us know if this has any impact on the voting problem
Hi Admin1
Just a message to confirm that the voting issue seems to have been resolved. Thanks for your much appreciated endeavours. š
Worth an upvote. Done.
On “A conspiracy theorist confesses” the “reply” button is not working.
**If anyone else has this problem can they comment under here – Admin1
It’s working for me. If the comment is marked unread you may have to click reply twice before it responds.
The software has now decided that a comment of mine has to await approval. This has never happened before.
It just does that sometimes, it’s an Akismet issue not a comment software issue.
The software occasionally thinks I have voted for a comment that I have not voted on.
Admin
Not sure why, but the latest OffG article “Perspectives on the Pandemic #8” doesn’t feature on the home page listing of latest articles although I saw it featured on your Twitter feed about 6 hours ago. ( It is, however, included in the listing of ‘Covid19 narrative’ articles subset.) That is why there aren’t many comments as yet, it’s not that we’ve all decided to surrender to the mainstream propaganda!
Admin
Many thanks for increasing the default font size. š
The “Read More” feature, while keeping the pages free of long posts, does seem to slow down at times that I guess are peak use… late afternoon European time/ early U.S. breakfast with Off-Guardian.
At the time of writing I can’t open posts to read the full content. “Read More” let me in after four attempts/ waiting four minutes.
With the previous version of this comment system, it was possible to post the URLs of either images or Youtube videos, and they would be displayed inline. This seems to be no longer functional, which is unfortunate. Can it be restored?
Even then, people often posted the short-form Youtube URLs, and these were not recognized and displayed inline. It seems like this would be easy to fix. For example:
https : // youtu . be / 2DDXG-dHugc
With the new version, it was very briefly possible to upload an image with your comment, which was then displayed inline. This was a useful feature, but it now seems to have been removed. It would be nice to have it back, but if the inline display of external image URLs is restored, it’s not particularly important. But currently, there seems to be no way to display inline images, which is not an upgrade, but a downgrade.
We can’t support direct image uploads to our server as it is a potential security issue and – most importantly – will quickly take up a massive amount of space.
I find that the “Read more” feature, wherein all but the first few sentences of a comment is obscured until it’s activated, actually makes the comment threads almost unreadable. At least, it’s sufficient to deter me from doing so, I and suspect that I’m not the only one.
This (mis)feature is copied from sites such as Youtube, where 99% of the commentary is completely inane, and the last 500 words of any random comment are unlikely to be of any more interest to anybody than the first 50. In forums such as this, where there is supposed to be, and usually is, serious discussion, having to click “Read more” on anything that is long enough to be informative, just trashes the whole discussion. It also trashes any formatting that the commenter applied to make their meaning clear, so you don’t even know if it’s worth reading more without seeing the complete comment.
However, there is a real issue in that a small minority of longer comments are actually of little interest, and themselves impede following the discussion. There are a few regular personas whose high verbosity and low content has led me to simply skip past everything they write, but this often involves scrolling through several screens worth of pretentious drivel, to find the next person with something interesting to say. In such cases, “Read more” is actually helpful in bypassing this meaningless verbiage.
A possible solution to this problem is to retain the “Read more” feature, but to change the cutoff length after which it is applied. It appears that currently, comments under about 100 words are shown complete, whereas longer ones are truncated. If the cutoff length were changed to somewhere between 500 – 1000 words, the large majority of comments would appear complete, and the small minority of longer ones could be easily read or skipped, as desired.
It is almost certainly the case that this modification could be made by changing the value of a single constant in the comment script, so it should be easy to accomplish.
I’ve noticed two more changes today (Friday 5 June) compared to yesterday:
You have changed the “thumbs up/down” to “up/down arrow”.
You seem to have removed the facility (only recently introduced) for direct upload of an image (e.g. from device storage, rather than from a website)
.
Any particular reason for these changes?
Edit: Oh yes: could you please explain exactly how to use the “link” icon in the present configuration (when using a keyboard, e.g. PC/laptop)? It doesn’t seem to work quite as before, or at least not particularly intuitively.
see reply above re. Image library
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/03/post-your-commenting-problems-here/#comment-187007
How to use the link button
Highlight the text you want to be the hyperlink and click on the link button. A box should appear for you to enter the URL. Enter the URL and click ‘save’. The text will then be a hyperlink.
or if preferred you can just paste the link directly into the comment box and it should be clickable.
Why does my browser have to check before accessing this site? Puts people off when I share on FB – they think it’s a dodgy site.
Glenda,
I think you’ll find this is what the message says. So it’s the opposite to what you think it says! OffG is from time to time subjected to disruptive and damaging external cyber attacks so it is their web managers who institute these Web protection measures.
It’s nothing to be concerned about. We are being cyber attacked a lot lately. That notice is our CloudFlare software filtering out the real users from the attack bots.
Suddenly HTML tags are forcibly transmuted into escape sequences (even just ‘p’s !!).!
Can you explain what that sentence means please.
I’ve already told you the comment box is WYSIWYG and can’t take markup. Just use the buttons below for formatting.
Yes, I can. Yesterday ‘blockquote’ in the new style BTL system worked, today the required angle brackets to make them HTML markup tags are converted to escape sequences to render them as angle brackets, which obviates their use as tags. As noted elsewhere in this BTL, the markup buttons you speak of (below the text box, to the left) do not appear on this tablet. But the point is that yesterday (technically yesteryesterday UTC) markup tags worked in the NEW commenting setup and today they don’t.
Ok, it wasn’t easy, but I think I divine what you’re trying to say. Sometimes you can use markup, and sometimes you can’t – correct?
Are you always on the same device?
Rich text WYSIWYG editing is currently only available on desktop machines, and reverts to normal plain text editing on mobile devices.This is why the formatting buttons are probably not visible on phones and smaller tablets. You should therefore be able to use html markup on these smaller devices but not on a larger tablet, laptop or desktop.
Does this fit with your experience?
if it’s possible to use HTML markup on a mobile device, why should it be impossible to do so on a regular computer? I find using HTML tags easier than the WYSIWYG editor, but this no longer works. if it’s supposed to work for mobile, why should it be disabled for desktop?
It works sometimes
And the proof of that lies in the fact that the above blockquote was done with tags, not some ‘tag selected text’ button, which don’t appear on this tablet for some other reason that I have not yet bothered to think about.
Oi !
Not sure about ‘sometimeS‘. First I could use it, then I couldn’t, then I could. One instance, may or may not be intermittent: insufficient evidence.
Did I forget to close a blockquote? Moi?
All formatting dissappears when the comment is collapsed.[Carriage return]
So that what was a well constructed diatribe turns into a streaming rant. [Return]
Yes. I’m retaining the rant (it’s my default style) but using big splodges of —————- to format it.
Just discovered it might be a memory problem (shortage thereof?) in your device.
For “your device” read “our devices”.
it’s not a memory problem.
unless, for some reason, 16GB is insufficient for proper paragraph formatting, but that seems rather implausible.
As we don’t know what Lemon is using your certainty is indicative. Indicative of what I’ll leave it to you to decide.
Can you be more specific about that please.
Please note the appearance of this comment both before, and after, clicking “Read more”.
This is supposed to be the second paragraph.
This is supposed to be the third paragraph.
This is supposed to be the fourth paragraph.
now for some padding, to reach the 100-word collapse threshold:
’twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
all mimsy were the borogoves,
and the mome raths outgrabe.
beware the jabberwock, my son —
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
beware the jubjub bird, and shun
the frumious bandersnatch.
This is supposed to be the final paragraph. Do you see how the collapsed text has omitted all the paragraph breaks? All other formatting disappears as well.
It looks fine to me
No, there is a problem somewhere. Lemon’s initial report possibly corresponds with a seemingly similar problem here (where it is possibly intermittent).
I accidentally upvoted my own comment. I somehow thought that maybe if I clicked the arrow it would show me who had upvoted it. I am contrite, but I also want to warn that it is possible to violate the integrity of the system.
Excellent news that comments can be edit for 15 minutes! Many thanks.
Edit: it works too!
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it … why did you do this offg?
We didn’t. As already patiently explained several times, the developers of the comment software we use instigated a major update. We are just trying to work through the many bugs and glitches there seem to be.
On the plus side there are some good new features that should improve people’s experience.
Is the 15 minutes edit window configurable? i think 3-5 is already generous and means you don’t have to wait between every comment
you don’t have to wait between every comment.
There’s a comment by “Eric McCoo” on the Robert Kennedy article. I tried to downvote it, but I got an error message saying “you cannot vote for this comment”.
There is still a problem with upvotes/downvotes: when I attempted to vote on comments posted to the excellent “Conspiracy Theory” article just now, I was surprised to find that some already display registered votes. I got the “You already voted” error message. I assure you I didn’t already vote; I just got to the comment(s) in question!
FWIW, it appears that these votes conform to previous votes; i.e., when I encountered comments where a vote was already displaying, the displayed vote was consistent with my inclination. To use a handy example, a Louis Proyect comment already showed a downvote– so perhaps the system is duplicating votes from previous comments.
_____________________________
Since both the Admins and some knowledgable commenters seem familiar with WordPress’s arcane functions, can anyone point me to information regarding customizing one’s avatar? Perhaps I’m just thick, but when I’ve perused the WP “Support” page linked above, it seems mostly geared toward webmasters, to use a possibly archaic terms– persons actually creating and running blogs, not ‘umble untutored commenters.
Blogmasters, maybe? Anyway, FWIW I have visited the WordPress help pages, and could only find instructions for changing the image in one’s profile page. But I added an image there ages ago, and it does not display as an avatar in comments; I even changed it to test whether it would show up as an avatar, but that didn’t work. I can find no specific mention of avatars in the WP support pages.
Sorry to chunter on about a trivial issue, but it drives me mad when there is no readily-accessible help (overview, tutorial) that addresses a simple issue. Thanks for your attention and consideration.
To have a custom avatar on WordPress you need to get a gravatar profile. You can then upload images to that profile and select one to be your universal avatar.
https://en.gravatar.com/
Much Thanks!
1. Wot, no simple markup buttons?
2. Previously the “strong” tag seemed to be the only consistent way to get emphasis into a blockquote (though I suspect “b”, while not strictly synonymous, would have worked as well-. Now “strong” seems not to work at all.
So, now neither. Forced lesson in good style. No bad thing
Big grey inverted commas screw up “blockquote” use as a primitive formatting device, though…
The comment box is a wysiwyg editor, which doesn’t take code – the markup buttons are bottom left
Point noted about lack of bold option inside blockquote
Bottom left? No indication here (on this tablet) of anything bottom left, just white space. Also, on the same tablet, the ‘Settings’=’Edit’ gearwheel doesn’t appear until the posted text is touched somewhere. I found that out when I tenderly stroked one of my posts, which I usually do before moving on to the next…
See my reply to you above
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/03/post-your-commenting-problems-here/#comment-186193
Just now seen…
I think there are still some funnies in the up-voting part of the comments system. Sometimes it seems to be allowing me to vote for something I might have voted up before, and other times it won’t allow me to vote on things I haven’t voted for before.
Now, I could be mistaken; I don’t keep a careful note of which comments I up-vote (I may be OCD, but not in that particular respect), but I seem to have found quite a few comments that I could have sworn I’ve never even read, let alone voted on, but which have the coloured “thumbs up” indicating that I’ve voted, which if I click on, I get the red error message from on high.
Worth your looking into it perhaps, when you get a quiet moment. š
It just allowed me to vote up my own post. I was a good boy, and voted myself down again (and the total ups went down to what it was). I don’t think this is correct functioning though.
I’ve just posted on comments under the conspiracy theorist article. The post appeared but when I click on “reply” to those who’ve commented on the comment, nothing happens. I tried signing in but not sure why since I posted originally without signing in. That didn’t work anyway and now I’m being told I’ve been banned from trying. Help!
I’ve just started using the new comments functions. At last, an edit function, and a much easier formatting system. Top marks from me Admin!
Edit function? Not seen that.
Thanks for the heads up. I assume it may only work for a short while after the initial post? But that’s fair enough.
You got it Mike, very useful for sausage fingered old coots like me.
“I assume it may only work for a short while after the initial post?
Yes. Don’t know how long but yesterday it didn’t last an afternoon tea & snooze.
I had a problem loading the second page of comments on the “It’ all bullshit …” article, I assumed you were suffering a DoS attack or a China firewall issue, but I tried with a VPN and got the same result, so left it to the next day. Maybe just a result of the changes settling in. No complaints! Great site.
My comments have been premoderated (for months) – no explanation, but presumably because I disagreed with the general tenor of the COVID debate?
Comments appeared on the thread for a short while (albeit with premoderation notice presumably implying other posters could not see it) they then started to disappear.
From where I’m sitting this looks like censorship.
Don’t forget one of the reasons Off-G started up was because of frustration about censorship BTL at the Guardian.
It would be a shame to go down the same road IMO.
Don’t worry, we’ve not forgotten. Thanks for your feedback. Admin2
On a side note I think you have people here (maybe one in particular) posting under numerous names. I appreciate if they use more than one email its difficult to police but the writing is the same. I post this because if they are posting under a single email and you have called them out on this before can this be ‘managed’? Its very disrupting especially if they are sponsored. Thanks.
The article voting doesn’t work at all now for me on firefox + win 7. I get either ‘you have already voted for this comment’ when I haven’t, or something along the lines of not being authorised to post a comment in red text.
I have had similar problems, using Chrome + Win 7.
Voting does work as expected sometimes, but at other times, I get the error messages that Paul too mentions.
Have a look at Linux Folks, move away from Windows unless you need it for a particular reason, i suggest Linux Mint, Linux Lite or Ubuntu.
Great operating system and free yourself from Microsoft then try again tou can also try them without installing on your system.
https://linuxmint.com/screenshots.php
Totally agree Sir
I’ve had that “not allowed” to upvote message too… bit odd.
I think some of that may be due to lag, particularly if you click on the button twice, thinking the first didn’t register. Our server loads have been high or very high for a few days due to DoS attacks so that probably induced a lot of lag. Let us know if it persists.
Replying to a comment on the colour revolution article the uptake was so slow I lost patience and gave up. I rarely up or down vote but when I have it tells me erroneously that I’ve voted already. On a local forum the upvoting was so suspect I investigated and found a way to upvote my posts! After that I ignored it.
The new comment system is an improvement but loading very slowly on long threads.
Please introduce the edit function which you once said you would do, at least for 5 minutes after posting.
Upvoting and downvoting is very slow. On an iPad thatās otherwise quick.
Yes, we see that. It might just be a function of the server loads being pretty high the last few days.
A bit slow on Opera but on the positive side, you are keeping a lot of trolls from GCHQ and 77th Brigade under pressure round the clock trying in every way possible to take you down. Keep up the good work.
Not working on my iphone 5.
What is the ‘Login’ ?
Why?
What is the ‘Attach’ function?
Why? Copy and paste is easier and worked fine.
What cookies are placed by Off-G?
What are they called?
How do the stars function?
This from a old Samsung.
Can you explain more clearly and specifically what your problem is? The comments work fine with the iPhone5s we have tested.
Login is surely self-explanatory
The ‘attach’ function comes up when you click the add image icon; it gives you options to browse your device for images to add. You can copy paste a url Without clicking the image.
Info on cookies used by WordPress can be found here.
The stars function by clicking on them. As they always do. You can rate the article as you think appropriate. An average of all votes is shown.
You seem both needlessly antagonistic and bewildered. I hope this helps.
Admin1,
Specifilly the comment does not load and the upper right hand corner menu bars display their version of the never stopping wheel of doom as it fails to upload.
It is an Iphone 5, not 5s or any other such ‘improved’ variations since.
I know some banking sites have stopped working on it and Apple don’t support it with upgrades to its OS anymore. But it works fine with all websites and many apps. And certainly all websites.
Are we expected to upgrade hardware that costs more than a first car?
I am using a friends old Samsung J3sto post these messages.
There has been no login upto now – i am posting this from a friends old Samsung J3 and have not had to login in.
What extra benefit does it bring?
It has also remembered the name and
email details.
Text entering can be jittery and laggy too with the cursor often having a mind of its own. On both devices.
I asked about who has authored and updated your system for you on the previous thread to help with troubleshooting – you chose not to reply.
Antagonistic! How very rAd of you No1
āAre we expected to upgrade hardware that costs more than a first car?ā
No.
Direct your frustrations at the vendor of your phone. WordPress is based on internationally agreed web standards but some mega companies do their own thing, donāt blame OffG.
Frank,
In what way did your intervention help resolve any of the issues?
Does WordPress registration provide any additional facility? Like accessing comments and replies? Is it mandatory?
I have only once had to enroll with such a registration on any other website unless having to use an App .
Has anyone else got an Iphone 5? That can shed any light on this bugginess?
ok – I tried to use an iPhone5 to comment and had exactly the same experience you describe. We will check with the software developers but my guess is they have just not bothered to make it compatible beyond iPhone6, which is poor in my view.
I am guessing the only option is a new phone. š¤·š»āāļø
Got a spare Ā£500 you can send me?
Web sites should be able to function on any old browser.
After all itās not as if the upgrade is a into an app, with need for intrusive access to peopleās equipment for …security!
I guess Iāll have to downgrade to an ancient Samsung or youāll have to manage without my support.
š
get an Android phone; they’re better than Apple’s overpriced junk, anyway.
Huawei phones are well-made, and substantially cheaper than such as Samsung. plus, you can stick your finger in the eye of the American empire.
I am guessing the only option is a new phone.
it seems likely that upgrading the webbrowser should be sufficient to fix such problems. if Safari can’t be upgraded for some reason, try Firefox or Chrome.
Is there a search facility to find commenters?
you can page search in any browser – but only for comments showing.So search ‘lisa’ would find you but not if your comment is under ‘show more comments’
That’s on my “wish list” too; as Binra pointed out, unless one laboriously “unlocks” each “Show More Comments” bumper (or whatever it’s called) to display the entire thread, a simple page search for a username is inconclusive at best. š
you also won’t find any text that is currently hidden under “Read more”. there should at least be buttons at the top of the page to “show all comments” and “expand all comments”.
I would just like to say that I think the addition of the name of the person being replied to is a very welcome addition. It was sometimes difficult with more involved or multi-person exchanges to keep on top of the flow of comments and tracing back presented practical difficulties, now overcome. Thanks for that. š
Seconded. This is a useful improvement.
I should have added, the “lagginess” in firefox occurs when you try and exand the comments. I am in the habit of doing that for a “control F” to see if anyone has replied to my comments and need a reply back.
Teething Troubles…
You can use the ‘comment link’ button on the top right of your comment, to copy the url to the clipboard. If you put it in a text file, and call it something like ‘comment links’ or whatever, you can then go back to them anytime, without the need to ‘load more comments’, or even load the Off-Guardian home page etc, by just copying the link into your browser.
OMG! Never read so many First World problems.
And what exactly did you expect to find on a thread dedicated to glitches in computer software?
The problems vary, but over all the solution is to type a comment into Notepad or Text Edit then, once you’ve checked it, copy and past into O-G.
The delay in typing has two main characteristics. Firstly, a marshmallow stickiness – not a delay but rather like a typewriter where the key returns so slowly that you have to wait one second before hitting the next key, other wise the returning key will jam with the next.
Secondly, and most importantly, a feature in which sequential typing is fine but if you make a just one error and go back to correct an error, typing ‘space back’, everything goes out of sequence. I experience this on Infowars which seems to have the same software glitch.
The problem is off g is as censorious asnit pretends not to be! Theyāve just within the last half hour deleted my post except replies. Itās not a glitch or software or anything itās off g being bent a fuck
We are removing comments on this thread that have no relevance to the software issues – for reasons explained above. Go to any other thread and you are welcome to express yourself freely, but here we need to stay strictly on topic.
Thanks
Seems to be a bit laggy on firefox since the ‘facelift’…
and I cannot upvote my own unworthy and banal comments any more š
I really value the comments section and links to other sources / videos and new platforms people provide. I had not paid any attention to mainstream ‘news’ aka propaganda sites in over a decade, however, when the covidiocy launched I quickly figured out google/youtube etc. were censoring and promoting dis-info – so where to turn? I came across offG from links on another site and I have found numerous other interesting viewpoints / sources from comments on this site. Thank you.
I had a few teething problems with the new system but it seems to work fine now. And it looks better. Though I wonder if OffG could help me with trying to reset their main page so that I can see the last ten or so latest comments across all the posts. I used to be able to see this down the right side but it’s been gone for a while.
We removed that feature from the front page pending fixing a few issues. We do intend to put it back.
Admin 1
There was me thinking you’d removed it because the display couldn’t keep up with the flood of coronavirus comments! š Look forward to seeing it back in due course.
I don’t post often but when I do, no problems. I always read the comments and I just want to congratulate this site. Always a variety of articles from different perspectives and generally intelligent comments, although they always include the silly ones. But they are allowed to be published . I’m getting tired of some other sites like Sqwawkbox’s hysteria, and RT has become disappointing. Off-G has intelligence and an open mind. Thank you for constantly striving towards and inviting comments for, improvements.
1) I wounder how I can embed a video. When a put a youtube-link into my comments some weeks ago the video-screen would appear – but now only the link appears. May be Admin can give me a tip.
2) The same with pictures (jpg, png): Some weeks ago a link of a picture in my comment would let the photo or cartoon appear. But now only the link appears. May be Admin can give me a tip also for that.
Thank You!
Ok, noted – will look into that
You’ll get the thumbnail if you refresh the page after posting the link.
WordPress normally automatically turns youtube links into a video, like this:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgP_Au5RZVw?feature=oembed%5D
<youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgP_Au5RZVw?feature=oembed>
Okay, well that didn’t work!
LOL
Please sir why do people always thumbs down my comments?
Seriously you seem to have cracked all the glitches from last night, it was pretty bad last night very frustrating & slow just trying to scroll down was a like watching paint dry, seems all good today. š
True. And the cursor hasn’t suffered a touch of paralysis as I type this reply to you.The font is a bit small for my eyes though. At least on Firefox.
Depending on version (i’m using v77. you can zoom in (incremental size increase of text & images)) as much 300%. you’ll find it & be able to add it to your status bar (for quick easy access) via customize on main menu (or view on menu bar). Bound to be an addon that’ll do the same thing too.
Objective
Maybe I’m old, maybe I’m thick but what you say here is like a foreign language to me . š š
I’m with Reg on this. I have got bad eyesight, even with my glasses on, and I find the new font quite a strain to focus on for any length of time. Whilst not the be all and end all, if it could be marginally adjusted at source it would be a help.
I hear ya, i’m no spring rooster myself, but sometimes we’ve got to help ourselves when its to troublesome for others to accommodate our little problems.
Anyway text zoom feature is good for all websites. If ya need further assistance how to use/find it on firefox i’m happy to oblige.
Thanks, Objective. You are right about helping ourselves. I have actually been helpfully guided on a number of computer techniques over the months by some very patient people on here š so now I can add a couple more tips to my skills!
Cheers.
Judy, hold down the ctrl key and use the + and – ones to zoom in and out of a page. Cheerio
Thanks, Reg. Yes, I discovered this facility courtesy of @Butties just after I posted in reply to @Objective. So tip no 3 I was reminded of yesterday was to read to the end of the whole thread before making a fool of yourself and wasting everyone else’s time! š
Pressing ‘Ctrl’ with ‘+’ works to magnify the text on most browsers.
Sorry, b. I tried to upvote you – to acknowledge receipt and gratitude for your comment – but, for some inexplicable reason, a message popped up in red telling me:
So thank you for the comment. š
Yeah, I do the usual ctrl + to enlarge the page. Didn’t have to before. I’m on FF Extended Support Release.
That also works in Chrome, so maybe it’s become a browser “standard”, not that “standards” are necessarily universally standard. š
And like you, I didn’t have to before. Well, what I used to find was that the top level comments were at a readable size, but that replies to comments were at a smaller size, and so less easily readable. That appears not to be the case under the new regime.
And too much grey ink. What is it with tiny letterforms in light grey ink and young typographers? Ageism?