Curious how short the auto-logout setting is on this site. seems I login, find a discussion, and by the time I finished composing a reply, the system has logged me out and I loose the reply while being forced back to the login screen. Guess that means I’m taking too long thinking about the reply.
That’s something that I think should be discouraged on a philosophy forum.
Are you using a public computer? In any case, the best is to write your posts as a new email in a webmail client such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, which automatically save drafts. Always using Ctrl c before trying to post is not nearly as safe.
That, alas, is a habit I have yet to have acquired. And no, I’m not accessing the internet from within a public network.
I’ll assume you have word processing software on your computer. I think we’ve all lost brilliant compositions for one reason or another. My trick is to compose longer posts in word processing, and then copy-paste to the reply box in whatever forum I’m in. I’ve saved the post as a document in the word processor program, and once I see that it has successfully been copied into the reply box, I can delete that document.
It’s a workaround, but it keeps the bloodpressure down… 
The session length on the cookie is 60 minutes. If you click “keep me logged in” when you log in, this should not be a problem. Even if you have clicked that, if you do not submit a post within 2 hours of hitting ‘reply’, the form will expire, but when that happens for me I don’t lose the text, it just refreshes the form and my post is still there. This may depend on the browser/OS you’re using and how it is configured.
There’s really no foolproof way for us to prevent what you’re describing. Sometimes the user and our server will fail to connect properly when a message is submitted. Unlike Google, we don’t have the resources to autosave drafts. Copying has always been sufficient for me, but writing in a word processor or email client is another step up in certainty.
Hey, thanks Carleas. Having awareness of the session length is helpful. I will look into the keep me logged in setting and investigate the forms preferences in my browser. I use primarily Firefox when visiting this site.
I remember using firefox, it allowed me to simply backtrack my pages after logging in and allowed me to find the old text there. As I am borrowing a laptop (my old ones here disappeared, and my other old one comming from Cincinnati is infected with malware and can’t turn on) I can’t download Firefox, as Firefox offers protection.
This happens to me all the time, and I catch it 4/5ths of the time. It’s only with the really good posts I took alot of time to respond to and craft that I forget to Ctrl C because at that point, I’m exhausted and want to be over. But the one’s I don’t look over and check… I somehow always remember to do it. Don’t know why.
Honestly… had like a book on the history of republican institutions and capital, including pirate republics and greek states and colonial experiences… all lost. Just was shattering, thing would of came out to a pamphlet size. Even ran it through a spell check (which Firefox has, but Internet Explorer doesn’t.) I’m still erking from that.
Is this a setting specific to a particular browser? I have the options of something like: (paraphrasing) “log me in automatically each time I visit” and “hide my online status for this session”
I’ve checked as well in the UCP within the tabs I thought pertinent but can’t seem to find an option “keep me logged in”.
My attention span is only 60s so that is perfect for me. Not sure it’s any use but I do blame X-Box generation.
I get logged out about every 15 seconds but then I tend to post from work, so I have to get through the firewall, which is a pain, cause rotating ISPs’ll log you out quickly.
My works firewall hates everything. It’s like the great firewall of China only worse. 
Mowk, I apologize, I was thinking of “log me in automatically…” This should keep you logged in, and in the event that your session expires it should tell you that the session has expired and start a new session after a second or two without losing your post. Again, this may have something to do with the browser settings. I use Firefox on Ubuntu and Windows 7, but I’ve had the same experience on IE7+, Safari, and Chrome and on OSX as well.
Write the answer on your own PC and just copy/paste it into the site.
That’s essentially what I do, except I just click/drag/copy the text straight from the post box.