Yahoo Forum Archive

Hi!

I noticed that in PipMer's review of my story #141, "Between Childhood and
Coming of Age" that there are three slashes (///) that seem to have inserted
themselves next to her apostrophes. I can't imagine that she meant to do
that--it's probably some weird formatting thing, but that gives 6 extra
characters that probably should not be counted in the score.

Thanks,

Dreamflower


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Dreamflower

We've already been alerted to this one (it happened on a review on one
of my pieces) and I'm currently working on trying to track down all the
instances where it's happened and understand why that's happening.

But thanks for letting us know - we always appreciate getting reports of
problems when people come across them!

Tanaqui
MEFA Tech Support

Barbara Rich wrote:

>
>
> Hi!
>
> I noticed that in PipMer's review of my story #141, "Between Childhood and
> Coming of Age" that there are three slashes (///) that seem to have inserted
> themselves next to her apostrophes. I can't imagine that she meant to do
> that--it's probably some weird formatting thing, but that gives 6 extra
> characters that probably should not be counted in the score.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dreamflower
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
> Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.2/1562 - Release Date: 7/19/2008 2:01 PM
>

Hi All

> I noticed that in PipMer's review of my story #141, "Between Childhood and
> Coming of Age" that there are three slashes (///) that seem to have inserted
> themselves next to her apostrophes. I can't imagine that she meant to do
> that--it's probably some weird formatting thing, but that gives 6 extra
> characters that probably should not be counted in the score.

We've been looking into the issue of odd extraneous backslashes turning
up in reviews and we've identified the reviews where this has happened.
We'll be editing these reviews shortly to remove the extraneous characters.

However, we can't see any pattern in why this is happening - it's
happened to several different reviewers (but only twice to one reviewer)
and those particular reviewers seem to have other reviews where it
hasn't happened and which are displaying fine. It's also happened over a
period of several weeks, but with many reviews entered in between the
problem reviews that are displaying correctly.

We're going to carry on watching this issue, but at the moment our best
guess is that there's been some kind of intermittent server glitch going
on that's briefly messed up how our code handles "tricky" characters
such as apostrophes and quotes in some reviews.

Meanwhile, if you spot any reviews which have strange extra characters
in them, please report them to the mefa admins at mefasupport at
mefawards dot net, and we'll deal with them.

Thanks

Tanaqui
MEFA Tech Support

Tanaqui,

If you need instances of error, I had the same issue about 6 times late in
the week of 6th July or 28th June. It happened when I clicked to preview the
review before finalizing, though I can't remember which story it happened in
(a hobbit story featuring Pippin, though that only narrows the options
marginally). There were no slashes accompanying punctuation before I clicked
the "preview" button, but when it displayed on the following page, there
they were next to every apostrophe. I deleted them during my proofread, and
the error did not repeat itself after I saved. I don't recall seeing it
since, but I haven't reviewed much in the past 2 weeks.

Hope that helps,
Neume (the other Becky) :)

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Tanaqui <tanaqui@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Dreamflower
>
> We've already been alerted to this one (it happened on a review on one
> of my pieces) and I'm currently working on trying to track down all the
> instances where it's happened and understand why that's happening.
>
> But thanks for letting us know - we always appreciate getting reports of
> problems when people come across them!
>
> Tanaqui
> MEFA Tech Support
>
>
> Barbara Rich wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > I noticed that in PipMer's review of my story #141, "Between Childhood
> and
> > Coming of Age" that there are three slashes (///) that seem to have
> inserted
> > themselves next to her apostrophes. I can't imagine that she meant to do
> > that--it's probably some weird formatting thing, but that gives 6 extra
> > characters that probably should not be counted in the score.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Dreamflower
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> > No virus found in this incoming message.
> > Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
> > Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.2/1562 - Release Date: 7/19/2008
> 2:01 PM
> >
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Neume

Thanks for letting us know about this. As you were eventually able to
save the reviews correctly, it's definitely looking less like a browser
or code issue and more like something weird at the server end. So it's
maybe not something we can do much about "solving" - but it's always
good to know when something is worth devoting lots of tech support
effort to fix and when it's better to put our time and energy somewhere
else!

Tanaqui

Neume Indil wrote:

>
>
> Tanaqui,
>
> If you need instances of error, I had the same issue about 6 times late in
> the week of 6th July or 28th June. It happened when I clicked to preview the
> review before finalizing, though I can't remember which story it happened in
> (a hobbit story featuring Pippin, though that only narrows the options
> marginally). There were no slashes accompanying punctuation before I clicked
> the "preview" button, but when it displayed on the following page, there
> they were next to every apostrophe. I deleted them during my proofread, and
> the error did not repeat itself after I saved. I don't recall seeing it
> since, but I haven't reviewed much in the past 2 weeks.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Neume (the other Becky) :)

I've had it happen a few times as well, but I don't remember the specifics of when it happened. Only this: I use Firefox pretty much all the time.

viv

http://www.livejournal.com/users/spacellama

--- On Mon, 7/21/08, Tanaqui <tanaqui@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
From: Tanaqui <tanaqui@blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Extra characters in a review
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, July 21, 2008, 6:05 AM











Hi Neume



Thanks for letting us know about this. As you were eventually able to

save the reviews correctly, it's definitely looking less like a browser

or code issue and more like something weird at the server end. So it's

maybe not something we can do much about "solving" - but it's always

good to know when something is worth devoting lots of tech support

effort to fix and when it's better to put our time and energy somewhere

else!



Tanaqui



Neume Indil wrote:

>

>

> Tanaqui,

>

> If you need instances of error, I had the same issue about 6 times late in

> the week of 6th July or 28th June. It happened when I clicked to preview the

> review before finalizing, though I can't remember which story it happened in

> (a hobbit story featuring Pippin, though that only narrows the options

> marginally). There were no slashes accompanying punctuation before I clicked

> the "preview" button, but when it displayed on the following page, there

> they were next to every apostrophe. I deleted them during my proofread, and

> the error did not repeat itself after I saved. I don't recall seeing it

> since, but I haven't reviewed much in the past 2 weeks.

>

> Hope that helps,

> Neume (the other Becky) :)


























[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All

We've created an admin tool that allows us to search for reviews that
contain extraneous backslashes or other characters. So we'll be running
regular sweeps to find and fix these reviews, and we'll definitely do
one before the winners are announced.

Still not sure why it's happening apart from "intermittent server
glitch" though.

Meanwhile, please do go on reporting anything "odd" in reviews that you
think we should know about.

Tanaqui

Tanaqui wrote:

>
>
> Hi All
>
> > I noticed that in PipMer's review of my story #141, "Between
> Childhood and
> > Coming of Age" that there are three slashes (///) that seem to have
> inserted
> > themselves next to her apostrophes. I can't imagine that she meant to do
> > that--it's probably some weird formatting thing, but that gives 6 extra
> > characters that probably should not be counted in the score.
>
> We've been looking into the issue of odd extraneous backslashes turning
> up in reviews and we've identified the reviews where this has happened.
> We'll be editing these reviews shortly to remove the extraneous characters.
>
> However, we can't see any pattern in why this is happening - it's
> happened to several different reviewers (but only twice to one reviewer)
> and those particular reviewers seem to have other reviews where it
> hasn't happened and which are displaying fine. It's also happened over a
> period of several weeks, but with many reviews entered in between the
> problem reviews that are displaying correctly.
>
> We're going to carry on watching this issue, but at the moment our best
> guess is that there's been some kind of intermittent server glitch going
> on that's briefly messed up how our code handles "tricky" characters
> such as apostrophes and quotes in some reviews.
>
> Meanwhile, if you spot any reviews which have strange extra characters
> in them, please report them to the mefa admins at mefasupport at
> mefawards dot net, and we'll deal with them.
>
> Thanks
>
> Tanaqui
> MEFA Tech Support
>
>
>
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
> Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.2/1562 - Release Date: 7/19/2008 2:01 PM
>