Is there a way to set a timer to delete drafts after a few minutes?
It seems like that would solve the problem for everyone. Accidentally close your browser? Draft is saved. Leave and come back after a few hours? Draft has already been deleted.
+2
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I've never encountered a post being lost to the point where I couldn't just simply hit back to recover it (and if that makes the "save draft" or "post reply" buttons un-clickable like it did just now when I tried it, that is easily enough fixed by the juts copy and pasting the post again). So I'm in favor of turning it off if it means an end to the above stated "randomly decides to save a draft the exact moment I go to post bug."
And at the very least if will make far fewer of my posts start with a random "." or some other random punctuation from where I saved it as a new draft as a lazy workaround to actually going and deleting whatever partial post had actually been saved.
Manual draft saving works well, though I'm the sort to punch that button regularly (or even type something in word first). The auto-draft interfering with hitting Post Reply is something I encounter regularly though, to the point where I'll usually hit save draft, refresh, then post. So yeah, I'd say turn it off.
I definitely experience the "start to type a post, realize no one cares, be haunted by my stupidity until the next time I make a post" thing but ever since I figured out how to delete drafts it hasn't really bothered me that much.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Autodraft has been a boon more times than it has been a bane for me. I hope it stays.
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+1
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I'd like to see it off, solely to see the post reply button work more consistently
0
MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
My vote would be to have it off, as the posting bug is annoying.
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
I vote for "Off" too. I've had a post or two saved when I needed it, but the annoyance of having to clear out a saved post that has already been posted outweighs that.
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the annoyance involved amounts to what, ctrl+A and then backspace? And it's sometimes nice to be able to save a draft either for later or because you accidentally close the tab or whatever
The more annoying use case is when you hit quote in a thread where you have a draft. You're scrolled to the reply box, but if the quote is of sufficient length (like 5 lines), then any draft you have is obscured in the viewport.
On at least one occasion I've accidentally posted spoilers because I had them in a draft and later quoted someone. Sure they were only onscreen for a few seconds until I edited it, but still.
I'm pretty annoyed by it, and the few times it has helped me are vastly overshadowed by the sheer mountain of minor inconveniences the function provides.
That is, there has been one, maybe two times where I actually had an important post to make (heh), and my computer crashed or I navigated away by mistake, and thanks autodraft!
But then I get on my phone, and it has a freakout with the autodraft feature, and then every post I try and make I have to try and make twice, or I type a short post into the box, go away for a moment, and realize I have saved a draft forever in a thread I don't' care about.
Or I start typing a post, and accidentally navigate away, and then start scrolling through a thread and quote something to respond to, without noticing the previous text.
Again, each of these issues is small, alone, but they happen multiple times a day, sometimes within minutes of one another. I just don't see the point when we have a "save draft" button like, right there.
The few times autodraft saved me, I began forcing myself to hit "save draft" out of habit on posts that were more than a few lines in a topical thread.
I think the only feature the autodraft really contributes to the forums, for me, is slowing down my post speed due to having to wait for it to save a draft, then post it.
I have it adblocked on desktop. It might be an Opera quirk but I've never seen the need for it since hitting back after a failed "post reply" will return me to the previous page with the post still there, and if I accidentally close a tab I can reopen it from the closed tabs list, also without losing the post
On mobile I would rather it was disabled because of the frequency with which it causes the page to hang with the post reply button disabled, which I tend to resolve by copying the whole post, closing the tab, navigating back to the thread in a new tab, and pasting the post back in to the reply box
The annoyance of having drafts autosaved that are involved to delete is present, but not severe. Adding a "delete draft" button would alleviate this completely.
The main annoying thing is needing to press "Post Reply" twice when it gets interrupted by the draft saving. This is more annoying than the above, but is not hugely so.
Autosaved drafts that that you forget about and then you press quote and the quote gets added after the draft, making it hard to tell that you had a draft in there already, is kind of annoying, but also results in hilarious posts, so this one's a net positive to me.
It's genuinely saved my butt a few times when I accidentally clicked out of the text entry box and hit escape, or what-have-you.
Any annoyance about the "Draft Saved" notice on the mobile version (iPhone 5, latest updates) is way more eclipsed by the fact that the bottom button bar does not scroll down as the text box expands.
So, all in all, keep 'em, make the "Draft Saved" on the mobile site a little better, etc.
After reading the feedback, I'm going to leave autodraft on for now. We may see some improvements and tweaks in the future, but enough people like it (weighted for the fact that people who don't like a feature are more likely to speak up) that I'm inclined to favour the status quo.
I'd prefer it off. My anecdote would be that I've never been saved by it and it is occasionally annoying because I will hit "Post reply", wait a second, and try to figure out why nothing happened, and then see "Draft saved" in the bottom-left corner.
This is actually the biggest concern for me.
Would it be possible to increase the delay between autosaves?
Autodraft has seriously saved my ass a few times when I have accidentally closed the wrong tab or my wifi connection dropped or something else like that while writing a long post.
Yeah while its issues can be annoying on occasion, I would much rather have it and not need it than lose a large post and not have it.
What I would really like is just the option in a post box to clear that draft without going to the "my drafts" tab. That would solve 100% of my problems with the draft tool. I understand that this would require development time though, and not just flicking a switch.
Thankfully your passive aggressive post turned me right around and I now want to do whatever you think is best.
It wasn't intended as passive aggressive, it was intended as a serious response to your question and then follow-up post explaining my (solicited along with the community) thoughts in the context of what had already been posted.
I added (though I guess you made your decision) because I wasn't sure if you were still soliciting responses, since you had posted already based on what you'd seen.
Would there be a way to have autodraft only for posts above a certain length? Say, once you've typed more than 300 words or something. I utterly despise it, and would be very glad if it was gone, but I can see situations where people might lose content they've spent a while writing without it.
I suspect autodraft is more valuable in some sections of the forum than it is in others. For example, if someone is cooking up a ten paragraph "I think my roommate (we'll call him A) fucked my sister (we'll call her C), what should I do?" post for H/A and it's lost somehow than I think that would be more of a pain in the ass than the person who posted a single "Totally fucked my roommate's sister today, I hope he doesn't find out" sentence in SE++ that was lost.
Then there is G&T, where someone might lose a long and well thought out review of Tow Truck Simulator 2014 in the Steam thread, and although Writer's Block has long posts I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of them are just pasted from the author's text editor of choice, so there is very little risk of someone there truly 'losing' their emotionally riveting novelette about a guy who loses his innocence in Paris on the eve of WWII or whatever. Then there is D&D, where long posts are fairly common, so people might lost their well researched reply in an incredibly angry thread that seeks to truly define what affordable healthcare is, and then blame it on Congress somehow.
We're hoping for some tweaks to autodraft in the future to address the existing complaints.
What sort of impact does autodraft have on the servers? It seems like it would be a lot of extra data flying around since it's making a backup of every post that takes longer than X seconds to be posted, and another one every X seconds until it is posted.
I think it's a godsend, but I'm curious as to what mankind's insatiable lust for convenience has wrought upon our hardware.
SmokeStacks on
+1
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
You seem to have some sort of fixation re: fucking dogs?
If you're going to be writing up a marathon novel of a post, draft it up in notepad or something first, then copy-paste.
I suspect autodraft is more valuable in some sections of the forum than it is in others.
Personally, when I'm in a topic that involves debate and long posts that need to be carefully read over, autodraft is still more a hindrance than a help. Especially if a thread is moving or you need to catch up on a lot, I'll have multiple tabs open to different pages excising quotes down in that tab's reply field. In those cases, I'm in the habit of CTRL+A/CTRL+C to safeguard progress so I can just wipe out whatever happens to be drafted when I hit refresh on the most recent tab to check for more. In other cases that are just long posts without the pressure, the manual save draft button seems sufficient.
Most of the time though, the improbably frequent timing of hitting reply right when it saves an autodraft is a persistent nuisance, but apparently you can adblock autodraft? So I guess I'll just try that.
Seriously, the only issue with auto-draft is that you can't delete drafts. All the problems people have stem from that.
Except you can delete drafts? Cogwheel menu in the upper right of the forum, "my drafts".
That's a fairly high number of clicks to do something pretty simple.
I mean, I don't care, but I can understand being unhappy with the current solution.
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I didn't say it was a perfect method, but the person I was responding to said they couldn't delete drafts. I figured they must not know about that method.
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the only improvement the auto-draft feature needs is, if not the ability to decide on a user-by-user basis whether it is enabled, then at least a quick button next to Save Draft that is Erase Draft for that thread.
Autodraft causes 5 minute long hangs when using IE6 so I have to type everything in notepad anyway and click "Send".
Of course it shouldn't be turned off for this reason because no-one should be using IE6.
However not on IE6 it still annoys we when I quote someone and forget to check if there was anything saved in autodraft beforehand, usually what's left in there is something I decided was better off not said!
Posts
It seems like that would solve the problem for everyone. Accidentally close your browser? Draft is saved. Leave and come back after a few hours? Draft has already been deleted.
This is obviously no effort at all to implement.
And at the very least if will make far fewer of my posts start with a random "." or some other random punctuation from where I saved it as a new draft as a lazy workaround to actually going and deleting whatever partial post had actually been saved.
Personally I do not mind it when at a desktop, and it has saved my from losing posts of a couple of occasions.
On mobile though, it can make an already slow experience (3G) noticeably slower.
That would be my personal preference.
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But probably because most of my posts are this long.
The more annoying use case is when you hit quote in a thread where you have a draft. You're scrolled to the reply box, but if the quote is of sufficient length (like 5 lines), then any draft you have is obscured in the viewport.
On at least one occasion I've accidentally posted spoilers because I had them in a draft and later quoted someone. Sure they were only onscreen for a few seconds until I edited it, but still.
That is, there has been one, maybe two times where I actually had an important post to make (heh), and my computer crashed or I navigated away by mistake, and thanks autodraft!
But then I get on my phone, and it has a freakout with the autodraft feature, and then every post I try and make I have to try and make twice, or I type a short post into the box, go away for a moment, and realize I have saved a draft forever in a thread I don't' care about.
Or I start typing a post, and accidentally navigate away, and then start scrolling through a thread and quote something to respond to, without noticing the previous text.
Again, each of these issues is small, alone, but they happen multiple times a day, sometimes within minutes of one another. I just don't see the point when we have a "save draft" button like, right there.
The few times autodraft saved me, I began forcing myself to hit "save draft" out of habit on posts that were more than a few lines in a topical thread.
I think the only feature the autodraft really contributes to the forums, for me, is slowing down my post speed due to having to wait for it to save a draft, then post it.
Maybe that is a feature, not a bug, though.
On mobile I would rather it was disabled because of the frequency with which it causes the page to hang with the post reply button disabled, which I tend to resolve by copying the whole post, closing the tab, navigating back to the thread in a new tab, and pasting the post back in to the reply box
So, all in all, keep 'em, make the "Draft Saved" on the mobile site a little better, etc.
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Would it be possible to increase the delay between autosaves?
This would be my preferred interaction.
Didn't look like posting was necessary based on the volume of "agrees" focused around removing autodraft.
Autocorrect can duck right off, though.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
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Hey though seriously thanks for at least considering it and asking for people's opinions.
It wasn't intended as passive aggressive, it was intended as a serious response to your question and then follow-up post explaining my (solicited along with the community) thoughts in the context of what had already been posted.
I added (though I guess you made your decision) because I wasn't sure if you were still soliciting responses, since you had posted already based on what you'd seen.
Then there is G&T, where someone might lose a long and well thought out review of Tow Truck Simulator 2014 in the Steam thread, and although Writer's Block has long posts I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of them are just pasted from the author's text editor of choice, so there is very little risk of someone there truly 'losing' their emotionally riveting novelette about a guy who loses his innocence in Paris on the eve of WWII or whatever. Then there is D&D, where long posts are fairly common, so people might lost their well researched reply in an incredibly angry thread that seeks to truly define what affordable healthcare is, and then blame it on Congress somehow.
What sort of impact does autodraft have on the servers? It seems like it would be a lot of extra data flying around since it's making a backup of every post that takes longer than X seconds to be posted, and another one every X seconds until it is posted.
I think it's a godsend, but I'm curious as to what mankind's insatiable lust for convenience has wrought upon our hardware.
If you're going to be writing up a marathon novel of a post, draft it up in notepad or something first, then copy-paste.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Edit: Though I seem to be too late. I shall survive.
Personally, when I'm in a topic that involves debate and long posts that need to be carefully read over, autodraft is still more a hindrance than a help. Especially if a thread is moving or you need to catch up on a lot, I'll have multiple tabs open to different pages excising quotes down in that tab's reply field. In those cases, I'm in the habit of CTRL+A/CTRL+C to safeguard progress so I can just wipe out whatever happens to be drafted when I hit refresh on the most recent tab to check for more. In other cases that are just long posts without the pressure, the manual save draft button seems sufficient.
Most of the time though, the improbably frequent timing of hitting reply right when it saves an autodraft is a persistent nuisance, but apparently you can adblock autodraft? So I guess I'll just try that.
Seriously, the only issue with auto-draft is that you can't delete drafts. All the problems people have stem from that.
That's a fairly high number of clicks to do something pretty simple.
I mean, I don't care, but I can understand being unhappy with the current solution.
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What if was easier to discard a draft instead of going into your settings?
Perhaps a Discard Draft button next to the Preview/Save Draft/Post Reply buttons
Edit: Jesus Christ this thread is hostile
STEAM!
Of course it shouldn't be turned off for this reason because no-one should be using IE6.
However not on IE6 it still annoys we when I quote someone and forget to check if there was anything saved in autodraft beforehand, usually what's left in there is something I decided was better off not said!
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