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I've been getting this error a *LOT* lately, when editing an alias.
It only happens when I go to preview the changes, and it just happened to me after literally changing a few things, which could not have taken more than five minutes.
And then sometimes, it doesn't happen at all. It's very strange, and incredibly annoying, because it completely undoes all my changes.
I have seen this as well at random times, but it has been going on for a long time. Also often get a NoScript warning about a possible XSS/cross-scripting attack when I try to post. Both seem more or less random, but "backtracked too far" error may be associated with multiple editing and/or previewing cycles, whereas the XSS/cross-scripting warning seems to be more associated with taking a long time to edit even in 1 cycle, so they may not be the same problem after all. NoScript lets me get out of the XSS/cross-scripting warning (although a couple of years ago it didn't), but "backtracked too far" seems to have no bypass, and in any event I long ago learned to be wary of other random errors (not just on this site, and including web browser crashes/freezes/other data-killing glitches), so I always copy my entire post to the paste buffer before pressing Preview or Submit, and if the errors are recurrent, save it to a text file.
I'm usually really good at copying my edits on alias, if I'm working on long edits, or otherwise taking awhile.
But this has been happening a lot lately when I haven't been spending a lot of time on the edit, and I usually don't edit/preview in cycles.
When it happened tonight, I edited my initiative, added a trait, and 3 words of text.
I couldn't have the edit open longer than 5 minutes or so.
Posting--when editing an existing post or profile, usually--always timed out if you spent a long time doing it, but you would be booted to the front page rather than receive an error message. In this light, it's at least nice with the error message that it is clear that yes, you timed out, and yes, your post was eaten (I think pre-error message some folks never realized that their edits never "took" if this happened).
However, with this change, the timeout window appears to be much shorter. 5 minutes is definitely long enough to trigger the timeout. I've had it happen only after a minute or two. I've started just typing what I want in Notepad or Word and then just pasting it over.
Do you have multiple tabs open to paizo.com while working on your edit (or a single other tab where you navigate lots of pages)? I've found that the backtracking error can be triggered by opening tab(s) and performing multiple actions such as browsing pages of messageboard posts, and then going back to the first tab and doing some sort of submission action (such as making a post, editing your profile, or entering checkout)
^I don't know about the original poster, but I usually do this, but I only get the "backtracked too far" error or XSS/cross-scripting warning a minority of the time.
I very frequently have multiple tabs open--I very rarely don't--so that's an interesting theory, skizzerz. Not sure if correlation is causation at this point... but it is interesting to note.
I'm a one tab person, and I've noticed it happening way more lately (still only a few times).
I notice it FAR more often with multiple tabs (in those situations, mine are almost always Paizo.com -- including the PRD -- so not sure if that matters) than I do with just one tab. Of course if I have multiple tabs open, I'm also far more likely to be taking longer with my update.
FWIW, I usually assume my alias updates will time out and am very careful to Ctrl-C the whole thing before submitting and/or editing the form info (class, race, etc.) on its own so that part doesn't get lost when it fails to save.
Not sure if the problem's gotten worse or not, though.
Echoing all the frustrated sentiments - I'll also tend to have multiple tabs open.
While I tend to copy and paste as a safeguard, it happens often enough for me to get caught out and trigger the frustrated anger when all my good work.
Defo the problem has got worse of late.
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I love it when it happens. It makes me feel as if I broke the site somehow.
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I very frequently have multiple tabs open--I very rarely don't--so that's an interesting theory, skizzerz. Not sure if correlation is causation at this point... but it is interesting to note.
In this case, correlation is causation. Or one of the possible causes, at any rate :). (Warning: technobabble ahead)
The main paizo.com site (not the PRD) is coded in an old framework by Apple called Web Objects. The Web Objects framework keeps a fair amount of data on the server as to where you the user are inside of the application, so it knows what it should do every time you click a link or press a button. By default (and paizo may have configured it differently), it keeps 30 pages of history for each session.
How does this work? Let's pretend for the sake of example that it was 5 pages instead of 30. You start by opening up an alias profile for editing. So, your history looks like this:
...
5. Edit Alias Profile
Now, let's say you're trying to find some Golarion lore, so you open up a new tab to the paizo.com main page and then do a messageboard search. You see a couple of promising results and open up one of them in the same tab (let's say it lead to the Ask James Jacobs thread). Your history now looks like this:
...
2. Edit Alias Profile
3. Paizo.com main page
4. Messageboards search
5. Ask JJ thread
Now, you hit the back button to go back to search results and click on a different link. On the server side, it sees you backtracked to page 4 so it knows to re-display the search results. It then puts the new link you clicked as the new page 5 (as the server doesn't know if you opened that link in a new tab or not, so it has to assume you may be able to press Forward in your browser to get back to the Ask JJ thread). On the new thread, it has two pages and you clicked on page 1, so you then navigate to page 2. Your history now looks like this:
1. Paizo.com main page
2. Messageboards search
3. Ask JJ thread
4. Second thread (page 1)
5. Second thread (page 2)
Note how it bumped off your Edit Alias Profile. Now, if you go back to that tab and try to Save the profile, it will give you the error that you backtracked too far because the server lost all memory of what you were doing on that page.
The above is probably not the only way to trigger the backtracked error, but it is likely the main way (could probably happen if the website glitches out as well). Note that you can trigger it even with just a single tab if you use the back button a lot.
I have found that I can get this error even if I only have 1 paizo.com tab and 3 total tabs open (the others are GMail and www.d20pfsrd.com, if it matters). It seems to happen when I take a long time to edit my profile (not the only way to get this error, but seems to happen this way with some regularity -- hence the Breath of Life on this thread to report it).
Seeing this a lot currently, even with zero other Paizo tabs open.
There's this nice big field in your profile where you can compose a beautiful character background, only to have it lost to the aether because you spent more than a few minutes on it.
I see this is an old thread, maybe it's time to fix it?
I have backtracked too far for years, I'm afraid. I found that the only cure is to copy - always copy! - before hitting submit. Maybe in the far future technology will exist that will synthesize a cure for this ailment.
I get this error a lot. I rarely have multiple tabs open.
Same here. I recall a few patches over the years that were supposed to help with this, but none of them has made an appreciable difference for me at least.
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I have backtracked too far for years, I'm afraid. I found that the only cure is to copy - always copy! - before hitting submit. Maybe in the far future technology will exist that will synthesize a cure for this ailment.
I find it's best to type long posts into Wordpad or a similar program and then paste them into the forum.
I'm getting a ton of 500, 502, and 504 errors when trying to get to the site, look at posts, post posts, etc. The page only says nginx in addition to the error. Sometimes when I have the posting window open, I get a tiny popup box that says something like "network send queue: 0 bytes."