Auto Delete Anti Function

I've had this happen a few times now- whenever I type up evidence that I can outperform a room with a zillion monkeys and their typewriters by producing a new Shakespearian play, and more recently with the manifesto that was going to take down the global corporate oligarchy of wasters and bring about a new permaculture paradise promised land, I click the back button and everything is erased, retired to the library of Morpheus. Of course this annoys me but I come here concerned for the great cultural suffering humanity must face in the wake of such repeated tragedies.

Sure, I could just type all of my great works on some sort of text editor external to this web browser first, but every other BBS forum website I use seems to have some sort of autosave feature in the editor. Would this be difficult to implement here, or is there a reason it is not wanted?

I'm not fully following you.  Maybe this is what you are talking about?

Moderators will quietly remove things that don't meet publishing standards

But I don't see this happening recently for your account.

Do you have an example of a thread where this happened?

After I enter text into the "type your post here" editor box, if I close the tab or click the back button by mistake, when I click the forward button or reopen the tab the box is empty, the text is erased. (Since I use a fancy mouse/trackball, this happens quite a bit actually.) With other forum software, the unsubmitted text is restored to the editing box when I return until submitted or it is deliberately erased. It is all software, no moderation involved.

Coydon Wallham wrote:I've had this happen a few times now- whenever I type up evidence that I can outperform a room with a zillion monkeys and their typewriters by producing a new Shakespearian play, and more recently with the manifesto that was going to take down the global corporate oligarchy of wasters and bring about a new permaculture paradise promised land, I click the back button and everything is erased, retired to the library of Morpheus. Of course this annoys me but I come here concerned for the great cultural suffering humanity must face in the wake of such repeated tragedies.

Sure, I could just type all of my great works on some sort of text editor external to this web browser first, but every other BBS forum website I use seems to have some sort of autosave feature in the editor. Would this be difficult to implement here, or is there a reason it is not wanted?

Yeah, the back button causes the reply box to empty (sometimes)...but I've usually been able to retreive from 'tabs' on my phone.  Mostly, though, I try to remember to 'select all' and click copy just in case...then at least it's on hold when things time out or something.   Typing elsewhere and pasting in works good too.


Reasons for using the back button when writing a post?
Mine have been mostly accidental .

Coydon Wallham wrote:After I enter text into the "type your post here" editor box, if I close the tab or click the back button by mistake, when I click the forward button or reopen the tab the box is empty, the text is erased. (Since I use a fancy mouse/trackball, this happens quite a bit actually.) With other forum software, the unsubmitted text is restored to the editing box when I return until submitted or it is deliberately erased. It is all software, no moderation involved.

Just tested to verify and actually closing and reopening the tab doesn't erase the text. I tried the forward and back arrows 10 times- twice the text was retained, the other 8 times it was erased.

Not sure what it means that the software behaves seemingly randomly, but I do know other BBSes will keep the text even after I leave the site and don't open a tab there for a number of weeks (not that I could ever stay away from Permies for a full week)...

Coydon Wallham wrote:After I enter text into the "type your post here" editor box, if I close the tab or click the back button by mistake, when I click the forward button or reopen the tab the box is empty, the text is erased. (Since I use a fancy mouse/trackball, this happens quite a bit actually.) With other forum software, the unsubmitted text is restored to the editing box when I return until submitted or it is deliberately erased. It is all software, no moderation involved.

Okay, I see.

Yep, I don't see an auto-save-draft function happening soon.  Although some browsers have a cookie setting that can sometimes save text for a short time.  I don't know how to turn that on.  

I've got a shaky hand so I often close the wrong tab or press a button that takes me away from where I'm typing.  Eventually, I trained myself to type important things in a text editor (like Notepad or Wordpad on windows) and copy and "paste as plain text" when I'm ready to post.  This way I can also run it through two different spelling and grammar checkers as my dyslexia is usually bad enough to crash a spellchecker.


Permies already runs at a loss and we're focusing the development budget on some more urgent things.  

That said, there are things that people can do to speed this up like participating in the affiliate programme which earns money for permies and for people sharing the links.  If we can get permies operating in the green, there will be more funds to dedicate to developing new features.  

What Coydon is suggesting that has happened used to happen to me a lot.

I started using a different program to write my posts. such as Word.  

Actually, I don't like Word so I use my email to compose and save as a draft.

Now losing my content no longer happens.

Just a suggestion.

I'm in the same boat where I have lost stuff in the distant past enough times that I don't rely on any browsers to retain information while typing. I have a habit of writing large tomes of info, and then proofreading can sometimes lead to edits that make the layout seem nonsensical, so I end up reorganizing the whole thing. That's an awfully large amount of time and effort involved just to have it thrown away by a simple error on my part or something on my end having an issue. More important things I will save long term. I guess I've been doing it this way so long that I can't remember the last time I had a problem.

I do remember having a mouse with extra buttons which defaulted to back page which was extremely frustrating. I ended up having to set something up to disable the extra buttons.

Hi, Daniel

What program do you use to write and then save?

I use Linux and just write in whatever basic text editor is installed, in my case FeatherPad. I know there are all sorts of various note taking programs and languages and stuff geared towards typing, but I hen peck. I never got in to typing properly when I was younger and now that I have had multiple injuries to both wrists I find trying to do things the supposed "right way" is uncomfortable. I'm not a keyboard oriented person, and many things in the Linux world are geared towards keyboard-only usage and minimizing time spent using a mouse to increase productivity. It makes sense that a lot of free software is made by people who use computers a lot, so they tend to make tools that benefit how they operate.

I have a rather strong dislike of smart phones so I try to avoid using it for much of anything when I can. I do know some people will email or even text message themselves which can work well for quick reminders. I wouldn't want to have to tap out anything lengthy that way.

As far as backing up information, I really need a better way than manually going to each computer, sorting things out on an external drive, then copying that to other drives incrementally the way I have been. It's much too time consuming. I could send things back and forth across the local network, but that doesn't fix the other issues. It's been years since I looked into special software for that purpose, so hopefully things have gotten better since then.

r ranson wrote:
Yep, I don't see an auto-save-draft function happening soon.  Although some browsers have a cookie setting that can sometimes save text for a short time.  I don't know how to turn that on.

Yeah, the random erasing might be caused by my browser or even window manager, but I know the forums I use on XenForo have draft saving. I don't want to cause a big draw from staff resources here, but am asking in case it was a check box option on an adminstrative screen with Jforums, or an option otherwise readily available. If someone familiar with the software here could take 5-10 minutes to verify that one way or the other that would be groovy, but otherwise I'm willing to spend my own time to ask over at the Jforum support forum and risk their ire with my vagabond noobish presence...

I'm pretty sure it's on the "would be nice, maybe one day when there is money and time" list.  

But there are about 6 other lists with higher priority,  like the "must fix in 24 hours or the site will implode " list and the "Google demands we implement these features or else" list.  And getting mobile view up to snuff, and ... the lists are huge and development budget limited.