I’m no computer geek, but I wonder if this makes sense to anyone?
From time to time, I experience problems posting anything other than very short lines of text… I get an “internal server error” message which I believe indicates the problem is not at my end, but may well be related to the fact that I’m in the UK and the route that data has to follow.
My observations would be that:
1. It’s more likely to happen when a thread already has a lot of information… especially big pictures and also embedded you-tube stuff.
2. The problem may go away when a thread moves to a new (clean) page. Or not. Other threads which don’t have much information are sometimes affected. Creation of new threads is sometimes affected. Sometimes not. One section of the forum can be affected but not another.
3. It’s more likely to happen if I compose in MS Word and paste the text than if I type from scratch.
4. Hidden formatting in MS Word is not the forum’s favourite thing. A page break for example can upset it. Pasting the text before a page break and adding the text after a page break is less problematical (ie it’s the presence of the break itself not the length of the text that creates the problem).
5. When composing in MS Word using information gathered from websites and other documents, even formatting this as “plain text” doesn’t seem to stop Mr Gates from adding hidden stuff that can upset the server.
6. Adding the same information as a MS Word attachment generally bypasses the problem.
7. I have an Intel-5 processor with 4 GB of memory so it can’t be related to the performance of my PC... unless it’s because I’m using Explorer 8. Clearing my cache and even rebooting doesn’t help.
8. Sometimes the problem goes away after a day or two. Sometimes it doesn’t.
All of that leads me to conclude that when I hit the “post” button, if the two-way exchange of data (updating the forum but also refreshing my screen) is too large then an overloaded server somewhere along the route can’t handle it.
Anyone else observe these kinds of effects?
