posts go poof!

he main goal of any web site that allows you to enter text in a textarea is: NEVER lose the text that a user types in. With this forum's software, you can spend a great deal of time writing a masterpiece of a response, and then hit submit--only to be presented with a horror of horrors: "You cannot edit this post any longer". Anything you typed before seeing that page is lost. That is a big FAIL.

I used to never compose posts on a webpage itself: I would write them in a text editor and then paste them into the response box--so that I would never lose a post. Unfortunately, I've gotten lazy about that, and now I've paid the price. My masterpiece is gone, and future generations will forever search the ether looking for it, presumably to sell on ebay for a pretty penny.

It's also a big FAIL that you can't edit a post forever.

Testing... FAIL...FAIL

he main goal of any web site that allows you to enter text in a textarea is: NEVER lose the text that a user types in. With this forum's software, you can spend a great deal of time writing a masterpiece of a response, and then hit submit--only to be presented with a horror of horrors: "You cannot edit this post any longer". Anything you typed before seeing that page is lost. That is a big FAIL.

I see you are posting to the list via ruby-forum.com. That site is just a web interface to the real mailing list, which is hosted on Google Groups at:

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en

If you're having problems with the software at ruby-forum.com, try using Google Groups directly, or perhaps even using the traditional mailing list features via email. Then you can draft posts in your usual email client, and not worry about losing them in some web page.

Also, on the general point, most web browsers these days will restore the content you have entered into a form if you hit the back button to return to the form.

<snip>

It's also a big FAIL that you can't edit a post forever.

This is because it's not really a forum -- it's a mailing list. Things that you send to the list get emailed out to the list subscribers. So, just like an ordinary email, you can't edit it once it's sent.

Chris