The Dreaded ##-If you want to reply, type it above this line-##

Forum hint for the day.

We have all seen someone reply to an SSI forum email with a quick comment something like, “Yep, I agree!”. That is pretty darn hard to decipher without knowing what the reply is all about. Don’t shoot the messenger, it isn’t his fault. Its our forum system at work.

Let’s reconstruct the crime. You happily click on [reply] and make your insightful comments. Before sending it you look carefully at your email and you see both your comments plus underneath that what the previous person’s was saying in the first place. You click on [send] and all that info is received by everyone, right? Wrong!

Between your comments and the previous person’s original statement you may have noticed a small block of text that looks like this >>> “##-If you want to reply, type it above this line-##”. Unfortunately, this text is sometimes in faint grey text and easily overlooked.

What that funny line of text is doing is telling our forum system is to DELETE EVERYTHING UNDER IT! Boom, your reply looks like chaff leaving everyone else confused.

Here is what to do.

Preemptively DELETE the “##-If you want to reply, type it above this line-##”” stuff. Voila your message, and the previous message, will remain intact.

Hurrah!

– John “Forum” DeRosa