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Tyee News

The Mystery of the Duplicating Comments

Turns out, it's your fault. Well, and Apple and us. But at least we can explain how you can keep it from happening again.

Geoff D'Auria 26 Nov 2009TheTyee.ca

Geoff D'Auria whacks a software mole almost every day.
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We feel your pain. We really really do.

File this one under yet another random thing that goes wrong when your newspaper depends on a press made of software.

Little more than a week ago, some comments in our commenting forum started duplicating up to nine times. The strange part was that it wasn't happening to every commenter, just a few.

After some investigation, we discovered it was only happening to people who used Macs... but not everyone using Macs, just some. And it was happening to people using the Safari browser on a Mac... but not everyone using the Safari browser on a Mac, just some. Turns out it was happening only to people using the latest version of Safari, version 4.0.4, which was just released a few weeks ago.

So for people just wanting to know the quick fix, here it is: For now at least when you comment on The Tyee, use a browser other than the new Safari.

Read on if you'd like to understand better why we need to ask this…and to satisfy your inner geek.

When it became clear the latest Safari was causing The Tyee comments system fits, the question remained: why us?

Leaving aside for now our default conclusion in such situations -- a software-styled Unabomber character who, in conjunction with a secret cabal of governments around the world that don't like good reporting, plots regular minor annoyances against us and our loyal readers -- we started to think back to any changes we may have made to the commenting forum.

Among the myriad problems that cropped up when we went live with our redesign this summer, there was a special little problem that drove many of our commenters crazy. When a commenter posted a comment, the page reloaded and moved the reader to the top of the screen, not to the bottom of the comment thread where the comment was published. In addition, if a commenter chose the All Comments tab, the system would switch to the Best Comments tab whenever he/she navigated to a new story.

Not huge problems for the average reader and/or commenter. But when you're commenting or moderating a lot, it was one of those petty regular annoyances that could make you poke your eyes out.

The solution? After the goat sacrifice failed, we decided to add some custom logic to the system that would remember, for those logged in as commenters, if you've chosen the All Comments tab or the Best Comments tab. That logic would also send you back to the place in the thread where you published your comment.

Turns out, that's the logic that Safari chokes on.

We have our technical wizards working on a solution, but we're a small shop focused more on reporting than software. So, we're still a few days away from fixing it. In the meantime, thanks for your patience. And if you are someone who uses Safari 4.0.4, consider using Mozilla Firefox for now if you want to comment. It's free, good, open-source software, and it plays nicely with our system.

A note about browsers

In fact, if you want to see our site in all its glory, Firefox and Safari seem to have the fewest problems. Unfortunately, the majority of our readers use some flavour of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Here's the break-down:

With Internet Explorer, we're still having some display problems -- gaps where there should be no gaps, overprinting where there should be gaps. There's a point at which this never-ending game of whack-a-mole reaches significantly diminished returns. We're almost there. But if there's a display problem in any browser that seriously bothers you, please let us know.

No comment forum for the holidays

Given that we are a small shop and given the eventful year we've had -- a full site redesign while covering four elections, not to mention a rude and impromptu proroguing -- we're taking a bit of a break over the holidays. We're still publishing stories but the comment forum will be closed from Dec. 21 to Jan. 3. [Tyee]

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