Page 1 of 1 [ 6 posts ] 

TenMinutes
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 Feb 2021
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,948

19 Sep 2021, 12:11 am

I just made a post and I got a captcha. First, "are you human"? Then I had to identify aeroplanes. Twice. Then it gave me a 400 (bad gateway or something) error. I went back and made the post again and there was no captcha.

Is this normal behavior or is it a sign of something nefarious?



Dox47
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,577
Location: Seattle-ish

19 Sep 2021, 1:42 am

It happens from time to time, particularly if you're making a lengthy post, the website is just dated and things break periodically for no obvious reason.


_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson


Pepe
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2013
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 26,635
Location: Australia

19 Sep 2021, 2:34 am

Dox47 wrote:
It happens from time to time, particularly if you're making a lengthy post, the website is just dated and things break periodically for no obvious reason.


For me it happens *ALL* the time, when it does pop up.
But it is easy to overcome the error message.
Just hit the previous page function on the browser a couple of times and you pretty much almost never loose what you have written.

I think it has something to do with what browser is being used.
I use Foxnews Firefox, btw. 8)



Cornflake
Administrator
Administrator

User avatar

Joined: 30 Oct 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 65,512
Location: Over there

19 Sep 2021, 6:20 am

TenMinutes wrote:
I just made a post and I got a captcha. First, "are you human"? Then I had to identify aeroplanes. Twice. Then it gave me a 400 (bad gateway or something) error. I went back and made the post again and there was no captcha.

Is this normal behavior or is it a sign of something nefarious?
No, it's part of the protection offered by CloudFlare. See https://www.cloudflare.com/ and click on "Solutions".
Beware - it's immediately technical in nature.

As stated above - if you've apparently lost a post on seeing the "bad gateway" message, just click on your browser's "back" button a few times and you should end up back at the post editing screen with your content intact.

That said, for lengthy or detailed posts it's worth copy/pasting the content to an external plain text editor - Notepad under Windows, say, and saving that file.
Click anywhere inside your post and do right-click/select all (or Ctl-A), then right-click/copy (or Ctl-C), click anywhere in your post to de-select everything - then in the external editor do right-click/paste (or Ctl-V) and save the file (Ctl-S).

It's possible to be pretty slick with this: before pasting the clipboard into the editor do Ctl-Z (or right-click/undo), which should remove the text there, then do the right-click/paste (Ctl-V), then save the file (Ctl-S).
This is a simple way of keeping the saved version in sync with the edited version.

Pepe wrote:
For me it happens *ALL* the time, when it does pop up.
It's a mystery what triggers these challenges - it seems to be some any/all combination of length of post, number of quotes and number of times previewed. I don't think I've ever had one for a short(-ish) post, irrespective of previewing. There were none for this post.

Quote:
I think it has something to do with what browser is being used.
Nope - the error message is generated as a result of conditions external to the browser. I normally use Firefox but I've received challenges when using Google Chrome too.


_________________
Giraffe: a ruminant with a view.


naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 33,879
Location: temperate zone

15 Oct 2021, 3:38 pm

TenMinutes wrote:
I just made a post and I got a captcha. First, "are you human"? Then I had to identify aeroplanes. Twice. Then it gave me a 400 (bad gateway or something) error. I went back and made the post again and there was no captcha.

Is this normal behavior or is it a sign of something nefarious?


Pepe is right. When you get the "bad request" message just hit that back arrow until you get to your reply window, and usually your post will be right there...intact. And you can just hit submit on it a second time. And it will go right in- no fuss no muss - and no "are you a human" message.



Cornflake
Administrator
Administrator

User avatar

Joined: 30 Oct 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 65,512
Location: Over there

15 Oct 2021, 3:56 pm

^ It looks like this behavior is now a thing of the past:
viewtopic.php?t=400747


_________________
Giraffe: a ruminant with a view.