Not authorised to read forum?

Post Reply New Topic

Apologies if this is a known bug, though if so it would be nice if somebody could confirm that they've seen this kind of thing too:

I got an emailed Topic Reply Notification a few minutes ago:

You are receiving this notification because you are watching the topic,
"First time in history!! ! ! The NT/AS open hotline ! ! ! ! ! !" at "Wrong
Planet Autism Community Forum". This topic has received a reply by
lisageller99 since your last visit. You can use the following link to view
the replies made, no more notifications will be sent until you visit the
topic.
If you want to view the newest post made since your last visit, click the
following link:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=102721&p=8784260&e=8784260


On clicking it, I got this:

Information
You are not authorised to read this forum.

Just to check, I browsed to the topic in question (I presume it's the right one):
viewtopic.php?t=102721&p=8756572#p8756572
I was allowed in without any such fuss, but there was no post by the user referred to in the notification, and the most recent post there was dated April 3rd.

I'm guessing lisagellar99 was a spammer/bot and post 8784260 was deleted or moved to Cornflake's dungeon or whatever happens, which is why you see the not authorised message. The email was likely sent out just before the deletion occurred. So not really a bug as such, just unfortunate timing.

^
Thanks, it sounds plausible. I suppose it would have been clearer if it had said something more specific, such as "this post has been deleted." Clearly the notion that I'm not authorised to read that forum is nonsense, hence my surprise at the time. Still, software can be strange like that.

I'll meet you at the bridge at midnight, with screenshots of the thread.

No funny stuff -- and don't tell anyone!

That thread was moved to the special place where all deleted posts go because a user here was going to publish a book and take all the posts from that thread and publish them and she got mad about it when the thread was moved and blamed us and everyone told her she was going to plagiarize and they were not her work, it was other peoples work.

Edit: I was thinking of another thread so never mind.

It's actually a really precise error message. It's indicating exactly what's occurred. You just don't have enough context to comprehend what it means.

That would explain why I was able to access it by the "front door." It was only when I tried to use the link in the emailed notification that I got told I wasn't allowed to see the thread.

Still, it's interesting that there was a thread they had to hide away to stop somebody stealing it. They had a cheek trying to sell our work.

How so?

The post was moved somewhere you weren't authorized to access.

Hmm.....I see the first part of the URL is simply the unrestricted location, i.e. the "as-nt hotline" thread in the General Autism Discussion. So the other part refers to what? A special extended version of the thread only available to some sub-group of insiders, or is it something to do with this fabled "dungeon," perhaps a place where extremely dodgy posts are placed, like a police evidence room for a forthcoming trial? Either way, I don't know why I was sent a link to something I'm not allowed to access. If the notification email was sent before the move, I'd have expected to see a "post doesn't exist" note after I clicked the link. Once the post had been moved to its mysterious new home, I'd have expected no notification at all. I'm not complaining exactly, just curious.

The link refers to the post instead of where the post was located when it was made, the system doesn't realize it's been moved so you get a boilerplate error message about not being able to access where it's now located instead of a more specific error about it being deleted.

Guilty as charged, m'lud, guilty as charged...

lisagellar99 was indeed a spammer. Unfortunately the forum software has no way of differentiating between a post that was simply moved and one that was moved to an inaccessible area because it was spam/trolling/offensive.

It's very rare for anything to be deleted here, as in "irretrievably wiped", so from a member's viewpoint "deleted" actually means "moved to somewhere secret". Consequently the thread update message contains a valid link to the post, but it's inaccessible to members.
This is a messy side-effect of the way the forum software is set up; there are doubtless much better ways to handle it but it's too late to change without a total rebuild/reconfigure - much more so than the change from the terminally broken "old" version of a few years ago to the current version.


League_Girl, you have an excellent memory!

^
Thanks folks. It's much clearer to me now Having written a few rudimentary programs myself, I'm familiar with the problem that wished-for improvements are sometimes much harder to achieve than they might seem to anybody unfamiliar with the inner workings of the program.

Yeah I remember when oliveoilmom called her out and told her how her post is actually sounding as and few other members chimed in saying they felt the same way. I don't think they had the balls to write it fearing it would make them sound mean and looking bad. But she didn't really cared what people thought of her so she spoke her mind.

The first time I received that message, it really effected my self-esteem.