Friends of Captain Awkward

Logged in, went to the "I Need Help" board, spent hours writing out a problem, editing it for clarity, paring it down to the essential information, took a deep breath and hit "submit"

Then the sign in page popped up and everything I had written was gone. Just gone.


I feel like I'm going to cry.

Ouch! I'm so sorry that happened. :(

P.S. Maybe a good cry is in order? Jedi hugs if you want them.

Oh noooo. I hate when that happens. Jedi hugs if wanted!

Oh no! It's so hard to work everything into a coherent narrative and pare it down and try and figure out what you're asking, only to have it disappear. :( :( It's happened to me enough that I've started writing anything lengthy (posts for help, responses to other people, whatever) in some sort of other text editing program first so I can just copy and paste it over.

I'm so sorry. :( This exact thing has happened to me. I feel that it is a problem with the way the board works, because it is not something you expect- to have to write it in a word document, or copy it into one before starting. That's what I do now if I'm worried about it happening but those are not measures that you can know to do if you haven't had it happen.

Maybe a note could be added under the text box, warning users about it, if this isn't something that can be stopped from happening?

A lot of sites behave like this, signing you out automatically after a period of inactivity (typing a post on one page, without doing anything else on the forum doesn't count as activity). I don't think anything can be done about it, and adding a note under the text box might not be possible, or would require technical knowledge the admins might not have). What I usually do is to select the post I've written and copy it (Ctrl+C, or whatever the equivalent for OS X is) before clicking submit (it's not actually necessary to paste it somewhere else, Ctrl+C remembers what you last used it for). Occasionally clicking "preview" also helps, it reminds the website that you're active and even if you do get logged out, you could try going back to the previous page, which might still show your post in the preview form.

I think there is a "keep me signed in" option-- I've got that enabled, which mostly keeps me from losing posts. I also use the "save draft" button if I'm going to set something aside for a while.

I'm sorry that you got logged out when you were in the middle of asking for help. That really sucks. *offers hand-squeeze of commiseration*

Unfortunately there's nothing we can do to stop that from happening. The system may log you out after what it sees as inactivity (you're actively typing but not, say, navigating links or another activity that it can recognize). The other users here have given good advice on how to manage this without losing your work.