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Forum Observation - New posts 'disappearing' before returning

Brumski

ULTIMATE Member
This is predominantly a question for @Mark.J

Over the last few weeks, I've observed a small number of new threads being created only for them to 'vanish' in front of my eyes to return some time later.

The latest example is - https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/virgins-latest-ineffective-effort-at-fixing-problems.41433/

I'm very active on the forum so I happened to be online as the thread was created. I read the post, proceeded to quote part of it, and offered my reply. Except when I went to post my reply I got an error saying, words to the effect of, there's been an error as the post doesn't exist. Sure enough, when I refreshed the browser the thread/post had vanished.

I disappeared for an hour and came back to find the thread was again visible, with the original timestamp, and I could interact and respond to it.

Is there some form of post validation taking place for new users which removes their posts pending moderator/admin approval or is there something else causing the symptoms above?

It's not the end of the world, simply something I've observed happening of late.
 
My best guess is validation because Mark said that the reason for the slow page loading was bots, but it could just be a cache as well that updates at an interval, although this wouldn’t make much sense on a forum

@Mark.J have you considered adding Cloudflare to the site? You get free bot protection and they cache all static content you serve on their edge servers around the world, to name a few of the free features
 
It's most likely XenForo's automated anti-spam checking doing that. If the post re-appears then it means the forum put it down for a manual check by a mod/admin, I then checked it, and then it was approved and re-appeared. I don't pretend to know how it sometimes identifies some posts for checking and not others, but I like the strict approach, as it helps to keep the forum largely spam-free.
 
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It's most likely XenForo's automated anti-spam checking doing that. If the post re-appears then it means the forum put it down for a manual check by a mod/admin, I then checked it, and then it was approved and re-appeared. I don't pretend to know how it sometimes identifies some posts for checking and not others, but I like the strict approach, as it helps to keep the forum largely spam-free.
Thanks Mark. I was confident was a valid reason behind what I was observing but I was merely curious hence my question :)
 
You'll find more details about how this system works on the XenForo site, if you like. Not sure exactly where, but it is documented on one of their pages.
 
I have seen this happening and I think it's a bad design. I have even got email notification about a post that then dissapears and the link fails to load. Not good user experience. Sure the post should be checked, and send to manual check if required, BEFORE appearing in the site or any notifications being sent, not during or after. Anyway not a big deal but it's not rocket science, the XenForo guys should sort it out...
 
I have seen this happening and I think it's a bad design. I have even got email notification about a post that then dissapears and the link fails to load. Not good user experience. Sure the post should be checked, and send to manual check if required, BEFORE appearing in the site or any notifications being sent, not during or after. Anyway not a big deal but it's not rocket science, the XenForo guys should sort it out...
It’s even worse with XenForo because if you get somebody to make a plugin or code changes to solve it, the next update will almost definitely break them and cause a headache

Two sides of a coin, they also provide a very good/robust forum software
 
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