6:54 Double Vision in the Green

January 15, 2010 5:08 AM

There appears to be a weird post doubling/tripling error going on in AskMefi with posts from 6:54. See this Pern book question and beer question.

Essentially, replies are being doubled or even tripled in the questions linked above and the time 6:54 appears to be connecting them for some reason.

posted by Atreides to Bugs at 5:08 AM (55 comments total)

Multiple replies in this question about picture books, but not connected to 6:54. So perhaps that was just coincidence with the other two.
posted by Atreides at 5:10 AM on January 15, 2010

And doubling here and here.
posted by Atreides at 5:15 AM on January 15, 2010

Guilty. I hit post and the page hung up. I clicked away from the page and tried again...same result. Mods, go ahead and delete the repeated replies!
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:18 AM on January 15, 2010

Yes, I flagged my double post in this thread. . . but it wasn't at 6:54.
posted by katie at 5:33 AM on January 15, 2010

Even knowing about this problem I managed to spam that picture book question. Every time I pressed "preview" my comment didn't show up, so I thought I was safe. Then it finally showed up a trillion times.
posted by DU at 5:45 AM on January 15, 2010

Same thing happened to delmoi, then to me, several times (suspecting browser trouble, I tried lots of creative ways to persuade the post to complete). Flagged all the extras as double comments.
posted by flabdablet at 5:57 AM on January 15, 2010

My response to the picture book question was hung up for several minutes and I finally got a Server Error. I hope this is resolved quickly, because I'm fairly certain the entire MetaFilter community is anxiously awaiting my answer.
posted by Dojie at 5:58 AM on January 15, 2010

It just happened to me again in the Ethnic market thread. That beer thread was insane.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:59 AM on January 15, 2010

There are doubles and triples in the question about customer service, too.
posted by fancyoats at 5:59 AM on January 15, 2010

It just happened to me again in the Ethnic market thread. That beer thread was insane.

OK, this time I'm just messin' with you.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:02 AM on January 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Guilty. I hit post and the page hung up. I clicked away from the page and tried again...same result. Mods, go ahead and delete the repeated replies!

I admit I did that in the market thread but not the beer thread. I did refresh and return to the tread to see if my posting was indeed lost, then rewrote and reposted resulting in another double.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:04 AM on January 15, 2010

Looks like it may be fixed. There are a few new answers to the picture book thread that have single-posted. Including mine, so you can all breathe easy now.
posted by Dojie at 6:05 AM on January 15, 2010

I think the server is just having general hiccups, so across the board people are getting panicky when their post doesn't go through and try to repost -- and then both go through.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:17 AM on January 15, 2010

I've been getting bad response times and even a JRun error at one point. It's like 2002 all over again!
posted by bondcliff at 6:17 AM on January 15, 2010

It's still happening in the How can I get my friend to stop flirting with me question.
posted by desjardins at 6:19 AM on January 15, 2010

and i had an awesome answer to that one :(
posted by desjardins at 6:19 AM on January 15, 2010

Happening in the imperial march remix thread too.
posted by squorch at 6:21 AM on January 15, 2010

No, it isn't fixed. I only pressed Post once on another answer in the picture book thread and I got 3 comments out the other end after it timed out.
posted by DU at 6:22 AM on January 15, 2010

The server liked Pollomacho's beer explanation so much that it wanted to be sure everyone saw it!

Or perhaps this is the server's way of asking for beer. Hmmm.
posted by rtha at 6:23 AM on January 15, 2010

I'm no computergician, but based on this comment in the flirty friend question being slightly different from the one right above it, I'd bet that somehow hitting preview is actually posting the comment.


I didn't preview this because I didn't want it to post twice.
posted by dogwalker at 6:24 AM on January 15, 2010

So DU, how is that The Daddy Mountain book, ya' like it? :P
posted by marxchivist at 6:25 AM on January 15, 2010

jeez, the fact that my comment posted FOUR TIMES is evidence that I need to grow some patience and stop mashing the post comment button.
posted by desjardins at 6:25 AM on January 15, 2010

Or perhaps this is the server's way of asking for beer.

I think it's about time we admit that the server has a problem.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:34 AM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

As others have said, in addition to the double-posting, I'm getting some pretty slow load times.
posted by billysumday at 6:35 AM on January 15, 2010

Yeah, I got the long long times too. But I was patient and after a while, just hit the back button and tried again, so there's only one comment from me.

WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE NOW, HUH MODS?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:36 AM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

That crafty JRun has learned to act out when it's the middle of the night pacific time.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:37 AM on January 15, 2010

We're having issues with the ask mefi db since last week's data loss. We lost all of our accumulated indexes over the years so it appears right now that reading from the database is easy and threads are coming up fast, but even I personally can't seem to add new comments or delete those doubles without the page timing out (but it correctly submits the request eventually).

Something is pooling up the requests in a bad way and I suspect once pb wakes up (it's only 6:30am) he'll do some magic and fix it right up.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:40 AM on January 15, 2010

General response time has been poor for at least a week, with many timeouts and hangups. But then, I do live in the Appalachians.
posted by netbros at 6:40 AM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

I just got "Request timed out waiting to execute". I hope my execution will encourage the others.
posted by lukemeister at 6:48 AM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

General response time has been poor for at least a week

Yep, we've been trying to tweak the Ask MeFi comments database all week so that it was as speedy as before. We lost all our optimization settings on the snafu last week, but aside from this current hiccup things got back to normal around Monday or so and we've been doing 10-20% more traffic than ever since.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:52 AM on January 15, 2010

Is it still happening?
posted by electroboy at 6:53 AM on January 15, 2010

I'll be honest: I posted an answer multiple times just to screw with you guys.

No I didn't.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:53 AM on January 15, 2010

but even I personally can't seem to add new comments or delete those doubles without the page timing out (but it correctly submits the request eventually).

Maybe the server is jealous and wishes you'd pay some attention to it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:55 AM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

I seem to have just accidentally triple posted on This AskMeFi post.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 7:01 AM on January 15, 2010

Or perhaps this is the server's pb's way of asking for beer.

FTFY, etc.
posted by marxchivist at 7:12 AM on January 15, 2010

Things should be back to normal now. If you see double comments anywhere still, go ahead and flag 'em as double (but if you didn't just load the page really recently, maybe give it a refresh first to make sure they're still there since I just went through and did a bunch of cleanup).
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:18 AM on January 15, 2010

Things should be back to normal now. If you see double comments anywhere still, go ahead and flag 'em as double (but if you didn't just load the page really recently, maybe give it a refresh first to make sure they're still there since I just went through and did a bunch of cleanup).
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 7:40 AM on January 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Things should be back to normal now. If you see double comments anywhere still, go ahead and flag 'em as FNORD double (but if you didn't just load the page really recently, maybe give it a refresh first to make sure they're still there since I just went through and did a bunch of cleanup).
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:02 AM on January 15, 2010

I don't see any doubles
posted by blue_beetle at 8:08 AM on January 15, 2010

Things should be back to normal now. If you see double comments anywhere still, go ahead and flag 'em as double (but if you didn't just load the page really recently, maybe give it a refresh first to make sure they're still there since I just went through and did a bunch of cleanup).
posted by kbanas at 8:08 AM on January 15, 2010

I don't see any doubles



posted by blue_beetle at 8:08 AM on January 15, 2010

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posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:19 AM on January 15, 2010

Brandon Blatcher, you're still smarting from the disemvoweling thread, aren't you.
posted by Melismata at 8:33 AM on January 15, 2010

Oh man, that was the best joke that mods every pulled, had me cracking up all day.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:11 AM on January 15, 2010

Uh, now AskMe is eating comments. It's eaten at least two comments in the post about Cache.
posted by billysumday at 10:17 AM on January 15, 2010

Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention.
posted by googly at 10:17 AM on January 15, 2010

I've been seeing very slow server response times and the occasional error page for more than a week now. I guess it's as good a time as any to mention it. I haven't made a double post yet, but more than once I've cut my comment to the clipboard because I wasn't sure whether it went through or not. (not, in each case, so I just pasted it back and submitted it again a few minutes later after I was sure)
posted by ctmf at 1:13 PM on January 15, 2010

billysumday, what do you mean by eating comments? Are the comments posted, then disappear? Do you get an error message? Do you get a blank page? What's happening exactly?
posted by pb (staff) at 1:16 PM on January 15, 2010

sorry about the server response times, ctmf. We've been recovering from a problem last weekend, and we're working on getting things back to normal.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:17 PM on January 15, 2010

Comments were disappearing. For instance, originally there were six comments, two of which were doubles. Four unique posts. Then when the doubles were nixed, there were only three comments. I don't think the mods deleted any for inappropriateness or anything, they were all on topic. Then later it climbed up to seven comments, ten minutes later back down to six. Sadly I wasn't paying all that close of attention to individual comments or else I could tell you which comments didn't make it.
posted by billysumday at 1:31 PM on January 15, 2010

Oh, my God, cortex! That's the funniest story I've ever heard. I can't believe Matt actually said that.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:35 PM on January 15, 2010

Looking at the thread now and several comments have been removed for being off-topic.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:35 PM on January 15, 2010

cortex put what in the what how?
posted by qvantamon at 1:40 PM on January 15, 2010

Okay, got it. I was giving the thread a cursory glance throughout the day and didn't notice any off topic answers.
posted by billysumday at 1:43 PM on January 15, 2010

ok cool, thanks. Just want to make sure we didn't have a new issue cropping up. I know the last week has been rocky, but we're getting there. Response times are looking much, much better, and I think we've patched up our problems caused by the outage last Friday night. *knocking on wood*
posted by pb (staff) at 1:49 PM on January 15, 2010