This site has some serious glitches

29th Nov '21 by DaviStoVest

19 comments 1072 reads

I am sorry to moan but the Stockopedia web-site seems to be just terminally crocked. I have just spent the best part of 45 minutes putting together comments on ethical investment ... something I consider to be worthy of serious debate ... I switched away for 30 seconds to check a couple of facts and my entire post has disappeared. I am not a big Stocko poster but this is a topic on which I feel I have knowledge, experience and real value to contribute.

I'm totally p****ed off. This is so basic. It's a completely frustrating and totally irritating experience to put effort into contributing to a site whose membership I pay for at a not inconsiderable price ... and then find the whole thing disappearing into the ether.

This is just one of a thousand frustrations. This site needs serious improvement and quick.

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AnonymousUser1822519

29th Nov '21

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!

DaviStoVest

Sure ... I have breathed in and I have breathed out ... and I have repeated several times. Still ain't no Hamlet.

Dragon

Sometimes a comment is not helpful.

I've noticed that sometimes pages on this site refresh themselves, like the Discuss front page will update when a new post arrives. But the refresh can also occur when your in the middle of entering posts. It also happens in the portfolio area when you are trying to add a large backdated portfolio. You get half way through and then whole page refreshes. I think the developers need to check what pages they are allowing to refresh and turn the feature off when people are editing or adding stuff.

dcon85

Sorry to hear that, definitely a loss to the community when comments are erased as this place is notable for the quality of the posts. Obviously not helpful now, but to anyone typing up anything large - or hard to replicate I'd recommend either typing it up in word or a text document or regularly copying the whole post to clip board or a separate word doc (be careful with this ie not to paste over it). I've always done this when entering information to a text field, ie. a review on Amazon or using basically any form online, especially complaint forms, they seem to be notorious for deleting your entire complaint...

The only time I don't take these actions is when I'm using something online that has an auto-save feature, something like a web based email client, one note, ms word online - even then, you might lose the very last thing you typed.

Although the site has a lot of fancy features, I don't think these text boxes have any extra magic added to them to preserve data, and any random refreshes, whatever the cause will make the contents disappear.

I don't know if you had visited another tab when this happened, but this article may be relevant. https://www.alphr.com/chrome-t...

Although I've tried to overload my browser by opening 106 tabs and it didn't cause this post tab to refresh. However a manual refresh did erase the post - and it did not ask me if I'm sure I wanted to leave the page as I was still editing.

ken mitchell

DaviStoVest.

I understand your anger because this has twice happened with my posts. In my case both times it happened after editing the post. Instead of reappearing after the edit, instead the post had disappeared to be replaced by a message saying that the Post had been removed because of inappropriate content.

Both times there was no inappropriate content. When I used the green button to ask what happened, on both occasions Stockopedia staff said they had neither seen the post nor removed it. Nor unfortunately were they remotely sympathetic or apologetic or interested in finding out how or why my post had disappeared and replaced with a message about inappropriate content.

I now get round this by always copying posts.

I wouldn’t use this as a reason for not subscribing as there is so much that is so good on the site including the stock pages and the invaluable Small Company updates every day with Paul Scott worth the subscription alone! I’m also finding it very hard to adjust to the new site which imo is way inferior to the old one, but hopefully that’s just my level of competence in using the new site.

Rusty2

I’ve also had several long posts gomissing, some due to editing and then inappropriate comment, fortunately I had copied one post and reposted it and it was fine so there is obviously a system problem. I have also posted comments but they never saved, so never appeared. It is really annoying to lose long posts, I do try to copy them now.
The new site does seems worse for posts disappearing.

There are only a few new features on the new site I want over the old site and many things are still missing. Many more problems as well on this new site.

30th Nov '21

Thank you for helpful and sympathetic comments. The steam has stopped coming out of my ears now (or, at least, is at much lower pressure). I'm not about to desert Stockopedia but I do find it very frustrating. There seem to be so many issues with the new site and loss of features that used to be available before things were 'improved'. It really needs fixing.

Stu the Moo

May I respectfully suggest if putting together a long / detailed post, that you prepare it in advance on notepad / wordpad / word or your favourite pc based writing tool

I know it's not ideal, but I find that I can fiddle and wordsmith to my heart's content before copying/pasting into an online forum

And if it all goes terribly wrong, I've not lost all that hard crafted work - I can simply copy and paste again... just a thought

Yes, that's a lesson I've learnt before ... and seem cursed to learn again and again.

gmtrader

Well the site is certainly not perfect but what is? I’ve been using it for 2 1/2 years and what I’ve found is I use it more than ever now.
I have learnt long ago to always double check figures but on the whole I find the figures published are very good for a quick look before more in depth research.
The discussion board is good too for a discussion board. I think a lot of people go to varies boards to see if their decisions are correct. This is a fatal mistake imo. The boards imo are the very last place I go when checking out a company.
The discussion board also has the daily small cap report. This is fantastic and you won’t find anything of its like elsewhere. Just remember though, it is NOT a tip site!! It is just a few, well educated peoples views on companies. Whether you agree with them is irrelevant.
I also love the option for adding alerts. As a value investor, I have spent many years looking at varies charts, their supports, resistances and trend lines, and deciding where I would sell or buy. Being able to then set an alert allows me to set 100’s of alerts and forget about them until an alert is hit. This makes my life so much easier. I have been doing this for years via IG but with IG the alerts disappear after a few months.

Overall I love the site and would like to say thanks to Ed and his team. Keep up the good work and keep improving the site.

jwebster

I too have had this happen to me, posts disappearing on submission.

Interestingly, they would be better off, at least functionality wise, moving SCVR and discussions to a platform like Discord.

Fair point but you should not need to. I don't have word, I have wordpad but rarely use it, don't you have format issues, if you copy something over to another site?

I also like to see what I'm replying to. I have found if I leave the site then my comments often disappear but not always, I don't remember this happening on the old site.

I have been told by Ed, that things will improve when they move next month, I think this to the cloud. I hope so but have my doubts about cloud based systems, there have been problems.

The site is now running faster, in September it was very bad and the last update has improved things.

Revs8

Hi DaviStoVest.

Would you change the title of this post now that you have had time to cool down?

I totally understand your frustration and I would like to read a good thread on ESG investing as I've had similar thoughts myself. But to call the site "not fit for purpose" is unfair and inaccurate. Sites glitch and the internet is not 100% secure or stable. As previously suggested, long pieces of work should be written offline.

I personally am amazed that so few people can produce such a wealth of quality information. I am also surprised at how open and honest they are.

It's a fair point. I was furious at the time and the thread title reflected my feelings pretty well. But I don't need it hanging around at the top of the leader board in this form. I have come up with a still grumpy but less OTT alternative.

If you do have the patience to put up the intended article I would be interested to read it.

Silver Moon

I wonder if you were part-way through your piece Davi and it timed out? If that is the case, and there is always a strong case for my own method of cobbling up a message and that is the use of a page of Word document in tandem with the Stocko page. Put you thoughts on the Word page, fiddle with till perfection is achieved, copy and paste it onto your Stocko post. Nothing can go wrong and you can name and save your Word file if so wished.

Silver

That's what I should do, I know. I have commented earlier that this is a lesson that I have learnt and repeatedy learnt again on too many previous occasions (by no means all Stocko).

I think there is room for an interesting discussion around this. Andrew Hanson kicked this off in a new thread a few days ago (https://www.stockopedia.com/co...). I think I agree with Andrew pretty completely about goals and direction but suspect we have quite different views on the question of practicable and effective ways of pursuing them.

Unless a person is in 'climate denial', this should be important and interesting to all of us. I'll run up a post (initially in MSWord!) when I have the opportunity. Perhaps, since I will have had more time to cogitate on it, it will be better than the article I lost.

mwjackson

I have wondered this also. Why bother writing your own forum software when things like discourse (or discord if you want chat) are available and battle-tested? Just to embed some tickers in the sidebar? Seems like a waste of development resource.

This site has some serious glitches

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DaviStoVest

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