[FIXED] Dispatches blocked from updating by parts of code

[Khoronzon]

EDIT: Updated the thread title to more accurately describe the problem at hand. Used to be "Security check failed after successful captcha".

EDIT 2: Resolved as per this thread.

Pretty much what the title says. Whenever I try to update a dispatch, I get sent to the captcha screen, and upon successfully completing it, I still get a message saying "This request failed a security check" and the edit doesn't go through. I'm also getting this on one other puppet (Khorzromoth), but not any others. This doesn't apply to mobile, though being relegated to solely updating my dispatches on mobile is extremely annoying, especially given the fancy formatting I tend to employ. Clearing my cache hasn't worked, neither has relogging, and at this point I'm getting kind of desperate to be able to update my factbooks again.

[Frisbeeteria]

Security check failures have to do with other nations being opened in other tabs, or on other devices. You were probably answering issues or playing cards or RPing in another puppet while you were writing.

You should do your composition offline in a word processor, then log on to the relevant puppet and post. That way your complicated formatting doesn't get lost when you bounce.

[Khoronzon]

You were probably answering issues or playing cards or RPing in another puppet while you were writing.

That isn't actually the case. I don't have any other accounts open - I literally just opened my browser, logged into NS, and when I tried to post an update to a dispatch, it wouldn't let me.

[Phydios]

You were probably answering issues or playing cards or RPing in another puppet while you were writing.

That isn't actually the case. I don't have any other accounts open - I literally just opened my browser, logged into NS, and when I tried to post an update to a dispatch, it wouldn't let me.

Do you have any other devices that are logging into NS? Maybe a smartphone with the browser left open to NS?

[Khoronzon]

Do you have any other devices that are logging into NS? Maybe a smartphone with the browser left open to NS?

No, I've made sure that was logged out as well before checking. If there's any device that's logged into my account, I wouldn't be aware of it, though I did change my password and I'm pretty sure that logging out on one device also logs out any other currently active instances so that shouldn't be a factor.

One more thing I just noticed is that this issue doesn't apply to all of my dispatches. I can't really be bothered going through every single one, but so far, these three factbooks can't be updated, but these other three seem to work just fine. That might also be why I didn't appear to be getting the issue on all of my puppets earlier - it seems to affect dispatches rather than nations, and the one factbook I have on Khorzromoth just happened to be affected while the dispatches on other puppets that I tested this on were not.

Additionally, if I make a new dispatch and copy-paste the contents of one of the blocked dispatches (e.g. the first three mentioned above) into it, it runs into the same problem. However, if I copy-paste the contents of a non-blocked dispatch into it, it can be updated without issue. I suppose what this means is that the problem is somewhere in the content of the dispatches, but I'm really not sure what it could be at the moment. It also does actually apply on mobile, not quite sure why it didn't earlier but now I'm getting the same problems as I am on my laptop.

As another update, I asked someone else to try copy-pasting the raw code from one of my blocked dispatches and posting it as a new dispatch on their own account, and it went through without issue. No captcha test, no failed security check, which means that while the problem may have something to do with the content of the dispatch, it only applies when I try to post it - whether on this nation or on a puppet, even a newly-created one on a different browser.

[Khoronzon]

I've been doing some testing to find potential workarounds for the problem, and I've had a few weird finds. Using this dispatch to repost one of my blocked factbooks (this one, for comparison) piece by piece, the basic layout worked as normal (background, header, footer, text boxes, etc), as did the images, but when I tried to put in the opening paragraph of the first section, this part had to be taken out in order for the dispatch to be successfully updated:

Code: Select all

[i](birth name: Alexius XKV66-A; Khoryaz romanisation: Narshiss Imperator; born 18th Aug. 2302)[/i]

When I posted the paragraph on its own in a separate dispatch, that line didn't prevent it from being posted, but in the initial test dispatch that featured the original factbook's formatting, it seemed to be the sole aspect of the opening paragraph that prevented it from going through. I'm at a loss as to what about that line is preventing the dispatch from being updated, but that's just how it is. In any case, I think by now it's fairly obvious that whatever the problem is, it isn't quite like the usual fare in terms of security check issues.

Editing in the table beneath the opening paragraph was a fairly similar procedure - most of the parts that had to be taken out were contained within parentheses, which suggests that parentheses might be related to the problem at hand for whatever reason. Though the wingdings from the original were taken out, that wasn't because of testing, I just thought it would work better. The Early Life section, though it didn't have any text enclosed in parentheses, would only go through after I removed all the text enclosed in quotation marks - after some more testing, I've found that text enclosed in " ", ' ', ( ), { }, [ ], and < > acts as a "blocker". This seems to be applied selectively, with some enclosed strings of text being allowed through and some being blocked. An example of blocked text would be the line I posted above in the code box - replacing the parentheses around it still didn't let it go through - while an example of text that seemingly should get blocked but doesn't is the large quote above the text boxes, which may be related to the fact that it isn't enclosed in a text box.

These "blocker" characters weren't the only thing preventing me from updating the dispatch, though - I still had to delete some paragraphs that were being problematic for reasons I'm not quite sure of before I could post new edits. As far as I can tell, what this basically means is that there isn't really an easy workaround and I most likely won't be able to make a satisfactory approximation of the original factbook just by taking out a few simple bits here and there, though I may still end up finding ways to make something half-decent via band-aid fixes.

I repurposed the dispatch I initially used to post the opening paragraph without the extra formatting, using it as a paste dump for the text from the original factbook without the visual embellishments. It went as normal for the most part until I reached the paragraph beginning with Once the first phase, at which point I had to take out the quotation marks around "Manifesto of Lux" in order for the edit to be published. I didn't have any issues with previous instances of quotation marks in the dispatch, which could potentially mean that there's a limit to how many I can include, but given that I'm doing everything based on guesswork, I'm still very uncertain about how this works.

The next two paragraphs highlighted some additional information: the first contained a number of terms enclosed in quotation marks, all of which were within a point-form list block, while the second had one term in quotation marks and no list. I added the first one without any problems, but when I added the second paragraph, I had to remove the quotations around the term in question before I could publish the newly edited dispatch. My guess is that the limit I mentioned earlier doesn't apply to lists, which have their own internal limit for the amount of quotation marks I can use. This was just turned on its head after I added in a new paragraph, which contained a few terms in quotation marks yet didn't have any effect on my ability to publish the edit. At this point I have no idea what's happening. In any case, the paragraph after it initially blocked me from updating the dispatch, but I managed to proceed normally after replacing "5cm" with "five centimetres". Something about numbers being adjacent to letters, maybe. Turns out I can't include numbers at all in the later parts of the factbook, I have to write them all out as words.

I'll continue to update this post as I keep trying to remake the original factbook. Hopefully a solution can be found before I end up combing through all of my blocked factbooks in this manner to look for "bad" elements, but at the very least some sort of progress is being made.

[Bloodshade]

I helped out Khoronzon by posting the code in question and submitting it as a factbook and I've had no issues whatsoever. I am even more perplexed to hear that there are band-aids to fixing this. There should be more to it. I had no issues with CAPTCHA, at least in my experience, and it didn't even appear when I submitted the factbook. I'm just wondering what exactly is causing this problem for Khoronzon.

[Khoronzon]

It is now day three of my factbooks being broken. Attempts to add formatting to this dispatch to create an approximation of the original failed as text colouring couldn't be applied to the last few paragraphs (since I use text boxes to organise sections, I have to add text colouring to each box individually, rather than one instance of text colouring throughout the dispatch) without me running into the security check error when I tried to update it - that's probably the last "discovery" I'll be making for a while since this whole thing has me rather exhausted. If anyone has some idea of what's happening with my dispatches (and forum posts as well - I've been starting to get similar issues when trying to insert additional code blocks into my previous post), or could come up with an actual solution instead of the minor workarounds I've been trying to find, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Khoronzon]

Bumping this thread again - I've started transporting my lore info from NS factbooks to a personal wiki I recently made, but this is still a rather notable concern as not everything that I have will translate well into that format, and it's probably just a better idea to actually get to the bottom of this issue instead of leaving it be regardless of how well the wiki approach works as a substitute. As far as I know, I've done what I can and laid out just about everything I could find - though maybe the semi-coherent rant format I put it in isn't exactly the best - though from here it'll probably take a greater degree of access to and familiarity with the site's code to get the whole thing over with, unless there's just a really stupid and easy solution that I've somehow missed.