Signature bug testing

Carl Fogel <[email hidden]> wrote:
: And I just checked--they had 28,181 members at this time yesterday and now have 28,311, about 130
: new members in a single weekday.

carl i see where you're going with this. by this time next year they'll probably have well over
100,000 members and be marginalizing us on this newsgroup. carl, clearly you're a man of action.

right, then, any thoughts on how we put a stop to this?

any other 3l1t3 haxx0rs present?
--
david reuteler [email hidden]

I was notified by a cycling forums moderator today that the signature's had been disabled due a bug, maybe this same funky little bug.

I haven't been using an autosignature with cyclingforums so it appears there was a bug opportunity for appending signatures to users not availing themselves of the feature.

A couple of months ago Grenouil responded to one of my posts with Diablo Scott's autosignature. Had paid so little attention to WHERE I was seeing the familiar Diablo Scott autosignature with a differing name that I thought they were one person using separate names for differing venues. After looking at this thread, I went back and looked at the old thread and found Grenouil was quoting my post with the phantom addition of Diablo Scott's autosignature to my earlier post. I've seen the Diablo Scott autosig absent his familiar avatar on a few occaisions, so I think the bug has been around a while.

The few random appended signatures I've noticed since reading this thread today seem to be attached to short messages. It's as if there was an old signature left in a buffer that wasn't cleared by software before the new outgoing message was sent.

Skkpt1: In contrast to the hypothesis I just suggested, I got an impression from this thread that phantom autosignature's were both stripped from cyclingforum autosignature users as well as appended on other occasions. Is that a correct interpretation of observations?
Were plural autosignature's being appended in some instances?

I agree the quotation block controlled at the boundaries by characters leaves something to be desired in quoting. Easier to keep in one block or cut and paste with quotation marks for proper attribution. Bikeforums is similar to Cyclingforums in this regards.

Carl Fogel: I wasn't able to locate the diablo ornee random signature appending you referred to-I found the other searches you gave. Since both use autosignatures that is a slightly different scenario than a non-autosig user receiving another's autosig. Could you check the pairing if that is what you meant? If correct, which thread was that on? Or did you see a switch or a double signature?

I've also seen a few postings that appear to be responses to differing threads. I thought they were just misposts but after seeing this thread, I wonder if anyone else has seen this or know if it's a related bug? Most of the wrong thread posts seemed to posted via non-Cyclingforums routes. It seems more common on .recumbents than .tech.

Maybe a paradigm solution works best. I once had a supervisor that used to say, "if we can't fix the bug we'll market it as a feature." How about: thespian opportunities for randomly chosen roles.

M.E.B. (and this is not an autosignature!)

[snip some of meb's original post? let's see how it works in cycling forums]

Carl Fogel: I wasn't able to locate the diablo ornee random signature appending you referred to-I found the other searches you gave. Since both use autosignatures that is a slightly different scenario than a non-autosig user receiving another's autosig. Could you check the pairing if that is what you meant? If correct, which thread was that on? Or did you see a switch or a double signature?

I've also seen a few postings that appear to be responses to differing threads. I thought they were just misposts but after seeing this thread, I wonder if anyone else has seen this or know if it's a related bug? Most of the wrong thread posts seemed to posted via non-Cyclingforums routes. It seems more common on .recumbents than .tech.

Maybe a paradigm solution works best. I once had a supervisor that used to say, "if we can't fix the bug we'll market it as a feature." How about: thespian opportunities for randomly chosen roles.

M.E.B. (and this is not an autosignature!)

Dear M.E.B.,

I couldn't find the Ornee-Diablo* posts again, either, until I searched for "ornee" and "diabloscott" in rec.bicycles.tech.

Possibly the search choked on the * or some other "feature"?

You should now be able to find these two examples of the signature bug, one in which ornee has diabloscott's signature and vice-versa.

As for the posts that seem to be out-of-place, this is an occasional and entertaining bug in which you find your brilliant insights appearing not in the thread to which you replied, but off in the middle of an unrelated post with "Twilight Zone" music playing softly in the background.

I mentioned an example of this in a recent post "Re:Posting Question . . . " thread. If you search for fogel and anomalies,
you'll find the thread, but only a single post--and not the right one. If you're interested, the post that mentions how John Tomlinson and I found ourselves abruptly catapulted into an unrelated thread underneath a post by Sheldon is shown as #32 in the Google view. And that post has so far eluded my search efforts--possibly it was cleaned up during re-indexing.

The splitting of threads with the same name, the starting of new threads when the Subject: is changed, and other bizarre behavior might be explained if you ask David Damerell on rec.bicycles.tech or email him privately.

You'll have to deal with his stated contempt for cyclingforums, his understandable dislike for me, and his somewhat unusual behavior, but he may be spurred on to help you in order to live up to his boasting and would be the better for it.

(Hi, David!)

Carl Fogel

David Reuteler <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Carl Fogel <[email hidden]> wrote:
: And I just checked--they had 28,181 members at this time yesterday and now have 28,311, about
: 130 new members in a single weekday.

carl i see where you're going with this. by this time next year they'll probably have well over
100,000 members and be marginalizing us on this newsgroup. carl, clearly you're a man of action.

right, then, any thoughts on how we put a stop to this?

any other 3l1t3 haxx0rs present?

Dear David,

Now they're up to 28,421 members, 110 more in another day. In another year at 100+ per day, they'll
reach 64k.

As a man of action, the only strategy that I can suggest to make them go away is for certain
rec.bicycles.tech posters to call them all sock puppets.

This ruse worked once, so maybe it will work again?

Carl Fogel

Carl Fogel <[email hidden]> wrote:
: Now they're up to 28,421 members, 110 more in another day. In another year at 100+ per day,
: they'll reach 64k.

if i were a betting man (and i am) i'd wager it's not linear. it'll be at least 100k in 1 year.

: As a man of action, the only strategy that I can suggest to make them go away is for certain
: rec.bicycles.tech posters to call them all sock puppets.

talk, talk, talk. come on, carl.

: This ruse worked once, so maybe it will work again?

perhaps. maybe anti cyclingforum comments in each thread will cause them to censor it.
--
david reuteler [email hidden]

carlfogel <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[snip some of meb's original post? let's see how it works in cycling forums]

Carl Fogel: I wasn't able to locate the diablo ornee random signature appending you referred to-I
found the other searches you gave. Since both use autosignatures that is a slightly different
scenario than a non-autosig user receiving another's autosig. Could you check the pairing if that
is what you meant? If correct, which thread was that on? Or did you see a switch or a double
signature?

I've also seen a few postings that appear to be responses to differing threads. I thought they
were just misposts but after seeing this thread, I wonder if anyone else has seen this or know if
it's a related bug? Most of the wrong thread posts seemed to posted via non-Cyclingforums routes.
It seems more common on .recumbents than .tech.

Maybe a paradigm solution works best. I once had a supervisor that used to say, "if we can't
fix the bug we'll market it as a feature." How about: thespian opportunities for randomly
chosen roles.

M.E.B. (and this is not an autosignature!)

Dear M.E.B.,

I couldn't find the Ornee-Diablo* posts again, either, until I searched for "ornee" and
"diabloscott" in rec.bicycles.tech.

Possibly the search choked on the * or some other "feature"?

You should now be able to find these two examples of the signature bug, one in which ornee has
diabloscott's signature and vice-versa.

As for the posts that seem to be out-of-place, this is an occasional and entertaining bug in which
you find your brilliant insights appearing not in the thread to which you replied, but off in the
middle of an unrelated post with "Twilight Zone" music playing softly in the background.

I mentioned an example of this in a recent post "Re:Posting Question . . " thread. If you search
for fogel and anomalies, you'll find the thread, but only a single post--and not the right one. If
you're interested, the post that mentions how John Tomlinson and I found ourselves abruptly
catapulted into an unrelated thread underneath a post by Sheldon is shown as #32 in the Google
view. And that post has so far eluded my search efforts--possibly it was cleaned up during
re-indexing.

The splitting of threads with the same name, the starting of new threads when the Subject: is
changed, and other bizarre behavior might be explained if you ask David Damerell on
rec.bicycles.tech or email him privately.

You'll have to deal with his stated contempt for cyclingforums, his understandable dislike for me,
and his somewhat unusual behavior, but he may be spurred on to help you in order to live up to his
boasting and would be the better for it.

(Hi, David!)

Carl Fogel

--

Oh, dear! Snipping stuff at the start of meb's message appears to have disconnected that followup
from his part of the thread in rec.bicycles.tech and tossed it down below the original post for want
of any better place. Better snip more carefully in the future.

Carl Fogel

This is a test

skppt1 <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

A plain message with no signature.

Not only is the cycling forums signature bug visible in half a dozen posts in unrelated threads
outside the "helmet thread," as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the feature or bug was
shut down a few days ago by the moderator, rendering all of this well-meant testing pointless.

Here's the email that moderator Steve Richards was kind enough to send me when my message fell
between the cracks:

From: "Steve Richards" <[email hidden]> To: <[email hidden]> Subject: Signature
bug Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 20:24:14 +1100 Hi Carl

I never received an email from you about the 'helmet thread'. I thought it was better to remove it
from our site after I received a few complaints about our members replying to old topics. I closed
it for a few hours, but then complaints from our members about it being closed started rolling in,
it was easier to delete it from our system altogether. Since then I've also set it up so anything
that doesn't receive a reply for 3 days gets closed.

I also disabled newsgroup signatures as soon as I was made aware of the bug, which is why they
didn't show up in the sig test thread.

cheers

Steve

cyclingforums.comcyclingforums.comOpen ↗

My email asking if I might post this may have also fallen through the cracks, so I'm simply posting
Steve's private email here and in the helmet thread on the theory that silence gives consent and
that it explains what's going on to anyone with a reasonably open mind.

Carl Fogel

Thx for testing guys 🙂

I am very annoyed (I know that I shouldn't care, but I do) that I got accused of immitating other people. At the start I had no clue what they were talking about 🙁

It is buggy when you use the gateway. At first I didn't even know there were different forums (or systems) I was posting on. I just came here after a google on some arcane bike knowledge.

I assume they (rightly?) shot down the helmet thread as it was absolutely useless because of the bug and the dug in positions. I don't like censorship tough.

Boy I feel bad to getting into that mousetrap thread tough *bangs head on desk WITHOUT helmet*.

Tuschinski <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Thx for testing guys 🙂

I am very annoyed (I know that I shouldn't care, but I do) that I got accused of immitating other
people. At the start I had no clue what they were talking about 🙁

It is buggy when you use the gateway. At first I didn't even know there were different forums (or
systems) I was posting on. I just came here after a google on some arcane bike knowledge.

I assume they (rightly?) shot down the helmet thread as it was absolutely useless because of the
bug and the dug in positions. I don't like censorship tough.

Boy I feel bad to getting into that mousetrap thread tough *bangs head on desk WITHOUT helmet*.

Tuschinski,

As the "Sock Puppet" says, it is now clear, to me at any rate, that both you and jmitting are real
and distinct people. I see that you do have an ID in extremetech also. The bugs in cyclingforums are
extremely unfortunate as they muddied an already unclear situation. I think it's also plausible that
you and others in cyclingforums may not have realised that you were posting to Usenet. It seems a
few people strayed innocently onto a battlefield and got caught in the crossfire.

For what it's worth I apologise unreservedly for having accused you of posting under multiple
identities. I hope I haven't discouraged you from making future valuable contributions to r.b.t., to
other cycling discussions, and to cycling itself.

--
Dave...

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Dave Kahn

For what it's worth I apologise unreservedly for having accused you of posting under multiple
identities. I hope I haven't discouraged you from making future valuable contributions to r.b.t., to
other cycling discussions, and to cycling itself.

--
Dave...

It's okay, it's okay 🙂

Knowing how heated internet discussions get I understand why this escalated. I was just didn't understand what everyone was talking about. "Signature? I don't use a bloody signature!" LOL

the silly thing was that because I came here through a google on RSX history I entered immediately in r.b.t. so I never saw the warning about this being a gateway. I was clueless!

And don't worry, I wasn't scared away(I kept posting elsewhere on the forum)

I blame noone except the stoopid bug.

Thank you for the kind reply Dave.

skppt1 <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

A plain message with no signature.

What's going on here?

[email hidden] (Dave Kahn) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Tuschinski <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Thx for testing guys 🙂

I am very annoyed (I know that I shouldn't care, but I do) that I got accused of immitating
other people. At the start I had no clue what they were talking about 🙁

It is buggy when you use the gateway. At first I didn't even know there were different forums
(or systems) I was posting on. I just came here after a google on some arcane bike knowledge.

I assume they (rightly?) shot down the helmet thread as it was absolutely useless because of the
bug and the dug in positions. I don't like censorship tough.

Boy I feel bad to getting into that mousetrap thread tough *bangs head on desk WITHOUT helmet*.

Tuschinski,

As the "Sock Puppet" says, it is now clear, to me at any rate, that both you and jmitting are real
and distinct people. I see that you do have an ID in extremetech also. The bugs in cyclingforums
are extremely unfortunate as they muddied an already unclear situation. I think it's also
plausible that you and others in cyclingforums may not have realised that you were posting to
Usenet. It seems a few people strayed innocently onto a battlefield and got caught in the
crossfire.

For what it's worth I apologise unreservedly for having accused you of posting under multiple
identities. I hope I haven't discouraged you from making future valuable contributions to r.b.t.,
to other cycling discussions, and to cycling itself.

Dear Dave,

I admire your post. I also wonder uneasily whether I'd do as well, which is another way of saying
the same thing.

It's nice that there's this separate thread for such things, since the cycling forums administrators
solved a nasty problem by removing the original helmet thread from their system.

Carl Fogel

My post at 5:30 11/21 with Dave Ornee’s autosig followed Dave’s 5:29 post, both to .tech.

Might be indicative the memory is being overwritten without always being cleared between posts. If a shorter post follows, the signature is appended since its still in the memory block.

But, I wasn’t able to locate a Diablo Scott post proximate the 9/18 appending of his signature on my post here. He did post about 8 hours ahead of me, perhaps with a low posting volume during hurricane Isabel, that constituted an immediate preceding post. Or we may be barking up the wrong tree.

Let’s also see if by stripping the earlier posting but retaining the same subject and replying to my earlier post whether this post ends up as a subthread to my earlier post as expected or attaches to the original posting.

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Adam Rush
skppt1 <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

A plain message with no signature.

What's going on here?

Dear Adam,

It's a bit complicated.

A recent thread here on rec.bicycles.tech
about "Should I Wear A Helmet" has provoked
over 900 posts.

When members of cycling forums began to post,
they were accused by members of rec.bicycles.tech
of being liars, cheats, and frauds involved in
a conspiracy to fake a pro-helmet outpouring.
a tactic known as astro-turfing, a wonderful name
for a fake grassroots campaign.

A few posts to the helmet thread from cycling
forums contained duplicate or obviously incorrect
signature texts.

These odd signatures turn out to be a bug
in the process by which posts from cycling
forums from members who have not set a
signature in their cycling forums account
somehow erratically pick up another poster's
signature, possibly through our old programming
friends the unflushed buffer or the uninitialized
variable.

Benjamin Lewis (not Weiner, as I keep mistakenly
calling him) first explained this signature bug.
A quick search for examples uncovered half a dozen
cases in earlier unrelated threads where cycling
forums members who normally had no signature
mysteriously included Dave Ornee's signature text.

Excuse me for a moment . . .

I will not confuse Benjamin Lewis and Benjamin Weiner.
I will not confuse Benjamin Lewis and Benjamin Weiner.
I will not confuse Benjamin Lewis and Benjamin Weiner.
I will not confuse Benjamin Lewis--

Anyway, this thread began as an attempt to
test for the bug. ("Sock puppet" is the
contemptuous term used by rec.bicycle.tech
posters who insist that the 70+ individual
posters from cycling forums are just a
conspiracy to fake a pro-helmet opinion
by posting under different names.)

The test was doomed to failure from the
beginning because the system administrator
at cycling forums had already disabled the
signature feature before this thread began.

Even with the feature enabled, reproducing
the bug might have been difficult, since it
seems to involve a) cycling forums accounts
with no signature set and b) buffer problems
that require the unintended source message to
be the right length at the right time relative
to the new message. It might have taken dozens
or even hundreds of tests to produce a buggy
signature.

Again, no testing was necessary, since examples
were in plain sight in other threads. (I'd like
to adopt a snooty tone here, but I tried testing
messages myself before thinking of searching for
existing examples.)

In any case, cycling forums administrator
Steve Richards solved the nasty business of
unprovoked name-calling by simply removing
the rec.bicycles.tech helmet thread from his
site. (What else can a moderator do?)

The entire thread is still conveniently
available through Google Groups, which has
rec.bicycles.tech threads back through 1994:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=rec.bicycles.tech

If nothing else, this signature bug thread
allowed Dave Kahn to post a handsome apology
to the cycling forums posters, who can no
longer see the helmet thread where they were
accused of being fakes.

Carl Fogel

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Tuschinski
It's okay, it's okay 🙂

Knowing how heated internet discussions get I understand why this escalated. I was just didn't understand what everyone was talking about. "Signature? I don't use a bloody signature!" LOL

the silly thing was that because I came here through a google on RSX history I entered immediately in r.b.t. so I never saw the warning about this being a gateway. I was clueless!

And don't worry, I wasn't scared away(I kept posting elsewhere on the forum)

I blame noone except the stoopid bug.

Thank you for the kind reply Dave.

Dear Tuschinski,

It's awfully nice of you not to blame anyone,
but you' mustn't blame yourself for not seeing
any "warning" about gateways--no warning
should be necessary.

To be fair, it's amazing that the various forums
and newsgroups manage to exchange posts
as well as they do. Somewhere, a patient and
thankless programmer on cycling forums is
trying to unravel a minor problem that shouldn't
have provoked the outrageous rudeness that
you've so handsomely waved aside.

It's nice to see that Dave's post was met in
the same spirit.

Hope to see you around rec.bicycles.tech.

Carl Fogel

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by meb
My post at 5:30 11/21 with Dave Ornee’s autosig followed Dave’s 5:29 post, both to .tech.

Might be indicative the memory is being overwritten without always being cleared between posts. If a shorter post follows, the signature is appended since its still in the memory block.

But, I wasn’t able to locate a Diablo Scott post proximate the 9/18 appending of his signature on my post here. He did post about 8 hours ahead of me, perhaps with a low posting volume during hurricane Isabel, that constituted an immediate preceding post. Or we may be barking up the wrong tree.

Let’s also see if by stripping the earlier posting but retaining the same subject and replying to my earlier post whether this post ends up as a subthread to my earlier post as expected or attaches to the original posting.

The earlier change of header info while maintaining the subject attached the post to its intended response, unlike Carl's earlier thread that attached to the OP.

Let's now see if the post attaches somewhere else when the subject is changed but the header response information retained.

The earlier change of header info while maintaining the subject attached the post to its intended response, unlike Carl's earlier thread that attached to the OP.

Let's now see if the post attaches somewhere else when the subject is changed AND the header response information is changed.

Dear Werehatrack,

Weirder and weirder. I just happened
to look at my attempt at top-posting
from cycling forums, the one that you
pointed out didn't seem to be top-posted.

It does show up as top-posted when
viewed through cycling forums.

And so may this second attempt at
top-posting over your reply.

If I'm less confused than usual, this post
should look top-posted when viewed by
cycling forums, but not elsewhere.

(I just tried the preview feature from inside
cycling forums and this shows up as
top-posting.)

Carl Fogel

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Werehatrack

BOn 26 Nov 2003 08:33:58 +1050 said:

skppt1 said:

Within cyclingforums the quoted parts appear in a separate box. This message has an explicit
signature while the signature remains set in the profile.
--
Sock Puppet 1 <== explicit .sig

And now let's see what happens when I merrily top post a reply, having no signatures in my email or
my cycling forum account--just took every default, changed nothing.

And good Lord! There are an awful lot of options about signatures, fonts, and other things here in
cycling forums.

Carl Fogel

That wasn't top-posted, and there did not appear to be a sig beyond the autosig from CF itself.
Presumably, you already know this. This message brought to you by the Redundant Bureau of Repeated
and Unnecceary Duplication, Repetition, and Gratuitous HyperOverRequoting.

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail. Yes, I have a killfile. If I
don't respond to something, it's also possible that I'm busy. Words processed in a facility that
contains nuts. [/B]

carlfogel <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Werehatrack said:

carlfogel may have said:

skppt1 wrote:
> Within cyclingforums the quoted parts appear in a separate box. This message has an
> explicit signature while the signature remains set in the profile.
> --
> Sock Puppet 1 <== explicit .sig

And now let's see what happens when I merrily top post a reply, having no signatures in my
email or my cycling forum account--just took every default, changed nothing.

And good Lord! There are an awful lot of options about signatures, fonts, and other things
here in cycling forums.

Carl Fogel

That wasn't top-posted, and there did not appear to be a sig beyond the autosig from CF
itself. Presumably, you already know this. This message brought to you by the Redundant Bureau
of Repeated and Unnecceary Duplication, Repetition, and Gratuitous HyperOverRequoting.
--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail. Yes, I have a killfile. If
I don't respond to something, it's also possible that I'm busy. Words processed in a facility
that contains nuts.

Dear Werehatrack,

Weirder and weirder. I just happened to look at my attempt at top-posting from cycling forums, the
one that you pointed out didn't seem to be top-posted.

It does show up as top-posted when viewed through cycling forums.

And so may this second attempt at top-posting over your reply.

If I'm less confused than usual, this post should look top-posted when viewed by cycling forums,
but not elsewhere.

(I just tried the preview feature from inside cycling forums and this shows up as top-posting.)

Carl Fogel

--

Yes, the post above showed up as top posting within cycling forums, but magically turns into normal
posting when viewed through google.groups.

God knows what happens when it propagates to other newsgroup servers--possibly it's recited
backwards like the Lord's Prayer in satanic rituals.

Legof Lrac

but somehow rec