Topic: Ideas for the site

I don't know what's happening, but it's getting really annoying. Lately, for the past few weeks, whenever I check NL, there are just completely random times (no common time every day) where it says "something went wrong" when I enter an article, or I type in a comment and it says "please wait" for ages without anything happening, or when I tap the like button on a comment and it turns into a clock that doesn't go away, even though the internet is perfectly fine on my end. I'm wondering if there is a solution for this, any help is appreciated.

@ShieldHero yeah, I'm having the same thing happen. I just reload (if I just posted a comment I will copy it so I can paste it when I reload)

@ShieldHero @CaleBoi25 In case it is of any use, I haven't experienced any of these issues (yet), although it is true that I have not been on the forum for long either. Is it something that happens just once in a while? It probably has more to do with the server of NL.

@supermarido, to answer your question, it usually happens once every day or so, but sometimes it happens twice or day, or a week passes without any problems at all, which is absolutely confusing, if you ask me. The randomly sparse nature of it is why I waited this long to bring it up, just in case it stopped on its own.

@supermarido for me it only happens about once a week or so

Mmmm, I see...

@ShieldHero @CaleBoi25 thank you both, if it happens to me any day of these I'll know it's normal and I don't have to worry. And I hope that having brought up the issue will serve to solve it, on another level, if it has an easy solution at least.

Anyone else having issues with this site?

For the last 2 or 3 days, about every third link I press it gives me the generic error page:

This page isn’t working
If the problem continues, contact the site owner.
HTTP ERROR 400
(with a reload button)

I then can't do anything on the site unless I clear cache or close the browser and wait a few minutes. And then it repeats after I go to a couple links.

I'm on Android Mobile, normal Chrome, no ad block. VPN if it matters since Google Pixels simply have a built-in VPN by default. No problem on any other site or app.

@FishyS, yes, this has happened to me quite a bit. At first, it only happened once a week, then several times a week, and now the site hasn't worked at all for the past several days (I've been checking every single day). I get that exact same message with the error code. I downloaded DuckDuckGo a few days ago and haven't had any issues with it so far (currently typing this message on that browser).

@ShieldHero @FishyS I had the same issue, I also got around it via the DDG browser. Not really sure what causes it..

There is a dark mode if you're logged in. Open your NL account page, Profile Settings, then Preferences.

Has anyone found a fix to this that doesn't involve using an alternate browser? It has happened more and more to me until it's about 90% of the time.

If using the site only sporadically works when using the most common browser on the most common operating system, I imagine some traffic is being lost...

@FishyS email me a copy of the error messsge

Some recent spam posts showed that when the subject line is excessively long, that it would break the Report links due to the generated request URL being too long to include the post ID, since it had to include a Subject query parameter key and untruncated value.

Atop of just making for some unpleasant looking forum posts, there should probably be an upper character limit on subject lines so they can't be excessively attention grabbing.

@RupeeClock thanks for flagging, we've removed the spam and also reduced the character limit on the topic titles (they were a bit long anyway). That should resolve the issue going forward!

If it's not already planned, would it be possible to do mini reviews of the Switch 1 versions of major cross-gen games like Pokemon Z-A and Metroid Prime 4? It would be useful to know whether those games run well enough on Switch 1 (for the 100+ million of us who don't have a Switch 2 yet).

This may be controversial, not sure, but I think some sort of "like" system for forum replies would be nice. I always appreciate it on other forums. It can help separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

In my case, I often see a post I fully agree with and I don't think anything else needs to added, but currently the only way to indicate that I agree is to quote it and say "this", which actually leads to more clutter within threads imo.

@Dogorilla we are planning this, might be the form of "second opinion" within the Switch 2 review, we're not quite sure yet, but we will (where possible) see how certain games run on Switch 1.

@charliecarrot we have a like system on the article comments. Once we unify the comments and forum code we will be able to have likes on the forum posts too, so it will come one day

@antdickens That's great, thanks! Having it as a section within the Switch 2 review sounds like a good idea, especially if that makes it easier to do it for more games other than just the big first-party ones (as I imagine it would be difficult to justify writing full mini reviews for Switch 1 versions of every cross-gen game).

Is it me or the font size on this website look smaller today?

@Anti-Matter nope, I don't think so — maybe you've got your browser scaled?