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General Discussion / A think about the Great Disorder
« on: March 26, 2021, 11:44:54 am »
You know the Great Disorder, which causes post links in threads where greatorder posted (and had deleted a while ago) to be misaligned forwards by some thread-dependent amount? I just realized that pages, despite being indexed by post number, are not affected by this glitch. I lack the knowledge to understand why SMF behaves like this, but I think it's neat to point out.
This is a link pointing to page 10369 (at 15 posts per page) of the WTF thread.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.155520
This is a link that is supposed to point to the 155520th reply (10369 × 15 - 15, assuming 15 PPP) of the WTF thread. Instead, it launches you straight to the next page (as of this writing). Sorry MrRoboto, I'll be using your post as a test subject throughout. I'll replace it if you don't want me to use it.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.msg8262806#msg8262806
Observe the ends of the URLs. The one that you get for a page is indexed relative to the current total number of posts. The one for a post is indexed relative to something else. I have no clue what it means, but it sure as hell is larger. Global post counter? If so, there are a lot of posts I don't see, since the forum itself shows 4.8 million posts, and that number is 8.3 million.
If I run with the hypothesis that the 8.3 million figure is a sequential index of every post in chronological order, regardless of deletions or hidings, it's even more odd that the Great Disorder affects only quote links.
There's a possible workaround here by using the page link formatting instead of the quote format. Notice how a typical quote is formatted.
It turns out that the link= flag is very easy to work with. The link it generates is (assuming there isn't a different website specified?) "bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?", and then after that, it's concatenated with whatever is after the link= flag. I'm sure you can play some very funny tricks with that.
My workaround involves replacing the msg-followed-by-numbers thing with the post number, just like how page links are formatted. Just replace it with the trailing number of the URL of the page you found the post on. In my example, this would be
And if I release it from its [code] cage, it produces:
Which would get you at least within the vicinity of the intended post, rather than being flung forwards a hundred pages like you would normally.
I don't think it's a very practical workaround, but I suppose if there's a particular need for vaguely-accurate quote linking within the subset of affected threads...
This is a link pointing to page 10369 (at 15 posts per page) of the WTF thread.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.155520
This is a link that is supposed to point to the 155520th reply (10369 × 15 - 15, assuming 15 PPP) of the WTF thread. Instead, it launches you straight to the next page (as of this writing). Sorry MrRoboto, I'll be using your post as a test subject throughout. I'll replace it if you don't want me to use it.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.msg8262806#msg8262806
Observe the ends of the URLs. The one that you get for a page is indexed relative to the current total number of posts. The one for a post is indexed relative to something else. I have no clue what it means, but it sure as hell is larger. Global post counter? If so, there are a lot of posts I don't see, since the forum itself shows 4.8 million posts, and that number is 8.3 million.
If I run with the hypothesis that the 8.3 million figure is a sequential index of every post in chronological order, regardless of deletions or hidings, it's even more odd that the Great Disorder affects only quote links.
There's a possible workaround here by using the page link formatting instead of the quote format. Notice how a typical quote is formatted.
Code: [Select]
[quote author=MrRoboto75 link=topic=68850.msg8262806#msg8262806 date=1616638054]
[/quote]
It turns out that the link= flag is very easy to work with. The link it generates is (assuming there isn't a different website specified?) "bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?", and then after that, it's concatenated with whatever is after the link= flag. I'm sure you can play some very funny tricks with that.
My workaround involves replacing the msg-followed-by-numbers thing with the post number, just like how page links are formatted. Just replace it with the trailing number of the URL of the page you found the post on. In my example, this would be
Code: [Select]
[quote author=MrRoboto75 link=topic=68850.155520 date=1616638054]
[/quote]
And if I release it from its [code] cage, it produces:
Which would get you at least within the vicinity of the intended post, rather than being flung forwards a hundred pages like you would normally.
I don't think it's a very practical workaround, but I suppose if there's a particular need for vaguely-accurate quote linking within the subset of affected threads...
