How do I respond to a purple moosage?

?

Ahh...   hit reply.
Or tap on the illuminated envelope at the top of your screen

At the top right of your page, near your picture you should see an envelope.  That is your inbox.  go ahead and click it.

It will take you to the inbox which is a purple list of subject|from|date

click on the subject.  it should open the message

there should be a small brown button on the left of the screen above and below the message that says 'post reply'  

click that.  write your message. scroll down and click on 'submit'


Does this help?

S Rogers wrote:there should be a small brown button on the left of the screen above and below the message that says 'post reply'  

Unless the PM is from Staff/Gir Bot, in which case I think you can't respond.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah it's from staff and there is no reply button. I'm just a little annoyed because the message feels a bit like a scolding, but it contains incorrect information and I have no way of correcting it. It's really nothing important at all and I shouldn't be wasting my time with this, but the one way communication is very offputting to me. Maybe if a staff member reads this they can consider making those messages two way.

It looks like you triggered something when editing a the same post several times in a row, in the same way.

If the post is old or other factors, edits to a post may not appear right away.  

Yeah but that's the thing, I didn't edit it in the same way. I made several different edits. But the message claimed I tried to make the same edit 8 times, which is incorrect. So I don't know if the system glitched and made it appear that way, or if the staff member was exaggerating. It just would have been nice to be able to respond to help clarify.

From what I can see from your history, it looks like several posts were edited the same way over and over again.

This is something spammers use, so it's possible you triggered an automatic spam filter.  Instead of locking your account, it tests to see if you are a real human by encouraging you to modify your behaviour.

If it is a glitch, I would like to know more about how it happened because it's a new one.  

But I suspect... and I'm guessing here from what I know of the system... but I suspect that the edits required staff approval before being approved, so maybe you thought the edit went through, but it was still in limbo waiting for the approval, so you pressed the button a few times?  That would have triggered it.  

I'm curious, does it show the context of the edit, or just the characters that were edited? Because I did make multiple edits to the same or similar characters in different parts of my reply.

I'd also like to add that I do edit my replies quite a bit. Partly because I'm neurotic, but mainly because I can't see the text that I'm replying to while I'm typing my reply, so I will post, then edit to add a thought, change something that I realize doesn't make sense, or just because I notice a typo or mistake I made.

I would have to go into the logs and have a closer look but my sheep are hungry.  (all staff here are volunteers and my sheep have a history of running amock if they don't get fed on time)

but a quick glance shows that the edits are spaced out in time - several being a few seconds apart, then more and more over several minutes which discounts my glitch theory.  It also looks like they required staff approval to go through.

I'll dig into it more as time allows (I did mention volunteer).  But I suspect it's just a good reminder to be careful with the edit button.  The system has an automatic system to remove the edit button if it gets overused and it looks like you might have triggered the first stage of that by accident.

Thanks for your time in helping to explain all that. I will be more deliberate with my edits from now on.

Sam Benson wrote:I'm curious, does it show the context of the edit, or just the characters that were edited? Because I did make multiple edits to the same or similar characters in different parts of my reply.

I'd also like to add that I do edit my replies quite a bit. Partly because I'm neurotic, but mainly because I can't see the text that I'm replying to while I'm typing my reply, so I will post, then edit to add a thought, change something that I realize doesn't make sense, or just because I notice a typo or mistake I made.

I sometimes need to look at a post I'm responding to, as well. For a while, I didn't realize I could simply scroll down below the box I was typing in, to read the previous posts. It doesn't really look like you can, and it looks a bit different, not showing pictures, but if you scroll down, all the posts are there. I hope this helps!

I'll also ask, Sam, have you been using the "Preview" button at the bottom, beside the "Submit" key. One might not think that looking at the exact same words with a beige background instead of white would help catch typos and auto-incorrects, but it certainly helps me. I caught 3 things that seemed fine when I typed them, but seemed unclear when I read it in preview on the last post I made.

Just realize if you try this, that you can't fix the typos in the preview box - it appears above your "compose" box and you have to scroll down to the white background and fix the error where you originally were typing.

This is not a perfect world - as r ranson pointed out, staff are volunteers. The permie's Gir bot is programmed to help us keep things running smoothly, but it is absolutely possible to confuse poor Gir particularly if you're doing things that aren't typical of the bulk of our posters. However, personally, I really appreciate when people try to make their posts as comprehensible as possible, and fix mistakes if they spot them. Please look at this as a learning experience and try some ways to help work within our parameters, but still make great posts. I was just on the thread about Melissa's problem with a tarp roof on a hunting blind, and she really appreciated your thoughtful ideas.  ( https://permies.com/t/193655/Ideas-needed-canvas-roof-support )

And if you have other problems or questions, you've found the Tinkering Forum, and this is the place to ask. If you look at r ranson's or my signature lines, we have links to "How Permies Works" that will teach you all sorts of useful tricks to make great posts - like how to post pictures.

I do a lot of editing my posts because I think of things after I post... even after thinking about them before I posted.

Recently I improved my workflow (postflow?) as follows:

When replying to a big thread I often duplicate the browser tab, so I can easily browse through the whole thread while I compose or edit.

If I'm going to be delayed in posting because of life, family, work, or sudden random things, I often cut and paste my post into a text file to work on it over time, then copy paste back into the forum when I'm ready.

After I finish composing I review my post and inevitably edit it multiple times because my raw writing is all over the place and I contradict myself and throw in non-sequiturs.

Then I review it again, post it, and hopefully don't have to edit it after that (except I often do).

I don't know if any of that would be helpful for you or not, and others may have other useful tips.

edit: grammar (bolded for your viewing pleasure)

See. There I go. I also like to add an "edit" line as above, to show why I edited my post, since it's visible to staff anyway, at least that way everyone knows why I was fiddling without digging through wikipedia style edit logs.

Sam Benson wrote:it's from staff and there is no reply button.

All of our staff are volunteers. A particular volunteer might only be available for a few minutes per day or per week. Therefore best practice is to have moderation messages come from "staff", and for replies to go to the "Tinkering" forum, where any available staff can handle them in a timely manner.

Most, if not all of you must be using a computer because from my phone I don't have the option to preview my post, or scroll down to see the text I'm replying too. Thanks for the help though.

Sam Benson wrote:Most, if not all of you must be using a computer because from my phone I don't have the option to preview my post, or scroll down to see the text I'm replying too. Thanks for the help though.

I'm on android devices. In the top, right corner of your screen (on any website), there should be a little 'hamburger', if you click on that, then go down through the drop down, one of your options will be 'desktop site'. If you click on that, you'll get the desktop version of the site. You may need to zoom in and out, occasionally, but I do just fine on that, even as a mod.

Okay just found the "desktop site" link at the bottom of the page and yeah wow this is a whole different ball game! Thanks for the clue.

L. Johnson wrote:I do a lot of editing my posts because I think of things after I post... even after thinking about them before I post[b]ed[/

See. There I go. I also like to add an "edit" line as above, to show why I edited my post, since it's visible to staff anyway, at least that way everyone knows why I was fiddling without digging through wikipedia style edit logs.

I am the same way, I go back and forward a lot when I write. What I do is, that I while keeping the window with the post open, I write my response in a text editor. I use notes, and then just split my screen so I have the post on one side and my answer in another. It makes it easy to write the answer. It also means that I can leave it for a few hours while I think about what I want to add,  Once I am done and are sure about what I want to post, I just copy and paste it into my reply.

Edited to add: I just saw that you are using a phone, so this might not be useful for you, but I am glad you got some help. Happy writing