403s and Comment Squeeze

A quick post to talk about the 403 errors and announce a small(ish) change to how people comment on the blog.

[an orange-and-white cat tears at a newspaper with its teeth and paws]

Going to reign my verbose nature in this time and get right into it 😛

403 Error Q&A

Why am I getting a 403 error?
At the time of writing, we’re not sure. We’ve reached out to our tech person to figure out the issue but they are a third party to the blog’s upkeep, so it may take some time for us to figure it out.
I can’t change my display name!
You can write out your display name in the comments of this post or on the BlogTeam Den and we mods (who are not facing the issue on our mod accounts) can change it for you!
NOTE: It is time-consuming for us to change your display name for you, so please be patient if it takes a little while to do so. Avoid changing your display name as much as possible while the issue is still ongoing.
I don’t have an account and I can’t comment without getting an error!
Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to permanently change your display name to avoid the 403 error if you don’t have an account. You’ll have to do trial-and-error to find a display name that works.
What should I avoid writing in my display name?
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern for what is or isn’t allowed. Try to keep to simpler display names and experiment from there. If it’s not working at all for you, try to avoid changing your display name as much as possible while the issue is still ongoing.
It’s taking a while for BlogTeam to change my display name…
It is time-consuming for us to change your display name for you, so please be patient if it takes a little while to do so. Avoid changing your display name as much as possible while the issue is still ongoing.
How long will it be until the issue is fixed?
Unfortunately, we’re not sure. We’ll just have to adapt to the situation for now until we get an all-clear.
Is this related to the 503 errors a few weeks ago?
Most likely not. We were experiencing the 403 errors before the blog went down and they continued after the blog came back up. The blog went down because there were too many visitors to the site in one month, which shouldn’t be related to the display name changes.

That should cover most questions about the 403 errors related to changing display names.

[a long-haired tuxedo cat with white glasses strapped around its head lays on a cat scratching bed]

Now, what else was on my to-do list for this post… Oh, right—

Changes to Commenting

We’ve all seen comments getting squished the deeper the reply chain goes. We’ve all gotten subsequently annoyed at how unreadable those comments are. So, to help fix that, we’ve made a little adjustment to how people comment.

You can now only make a reply chain that’s 8 comments long, including the comment that started the thread. Afterwards, the reply button won’t appear anymore, so you’ll have to head up the chain to find somewhere to reply. With a depth of 8 comments, it still lets the conversation get pretty far while still remaining relatively readable!

Mods will, as always, be a bit of an exception because our dashboards let us reply to comments even if they can’t be replied to on the main site. This shouldn’t cause too much of an issue because the 9th level is still readable and those comments we make can’t be replied to.