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Read other letters about this article
Yes, Pyrian is right, anyone who posts should probably make a habit of copying their text to their clipboard before hitting the submit button, just to be safe. Of course, sometimes even the most savvy of us forget, and stuff happens. What I'm saying, though, is that the Salon message board exacerbates the problem through bad programming, and could easily be fixed. (I didn't spell it out before, because I was afraid of getting timed-out again if I spent too much time writing. Here's the dime version.)
1) The person is asked for a username/ password.
2) The person writes a message in the text box.
Current version of Salon's message board:
3) When the person is done and hits "Publish my letter," the program checks to see if the person's session has expired. If not, they move on to step 5. If the session has expired, they move on to
4) The person is asked for a password. Upon providing the password, they are returned to step 2.
5) The letter is published. Notice the flaw in this flow chart?
Proposed version to improve Salon's message board.
3) When the person is done and hits "Publish my letter," the data in the form is saved to a variable - call it "saved_message". Then the program checks to see if the person's session has expired. If not, they move on to step 5.
4) The person is asked for a password. Upon providing the password, the computer checks the content of the variable "saved_message" and passes that information to the Salon server.
5) The letter is published. Notice how one simple fix has greatly improved the likelihood that the writer's data will not be lost?
Please, Salon, don't assume that all your users practice the virtuous habit of saving all our work all the time. It's a minor fix.
Ok, now I'll copy, save, and publish...
