Silk Road forums
Support => Customer support => Topic started by: sleeves on April 03, 2013, 09:11 pm
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I really think this belongs in the Technical Support forum, but I cannot post there. So here goes:
I recently heard about SR & BMR on the clear web and decided to see what all the fuss is about. So I made a temporary account here, to get familiar with the system first, because I did not want to fuck something up and wreck a good handle or lose my money in escrow. So I looked around and read up on how everything works. Then the next day I go back and I cant log in. After a dozen tries I gave up and created a new account. Then it worked perfectly again.
Well guess what? The exact same thing happened on BMR. I made a new account there at the same time, and the next day it quit working. So I created another account, and it works again. Isnt that kind of a strange coincidence? And sometimes it will say "wrong captcha" when I KNOW it was not wrong. Now what if I had put money in escrow on either one of these sites? Would I have lost it all? And what if your server crashed? Would everyone lose their escrow accounts?
And what about the login procedure? Is the CAPTCHA case sensitive? Is javascript required? And what about cookies? If it needs any of these things enabled it ought to say so. But none of that seemed to make any difference with my login problems. Then there are the TOR circuit timeouts, which add another layer of confusion. Sometimes its really difficult to tell what the problem is, and the FAQ does not address these things. After I made the new account, there were problems with the search. It told me "Your last search was less than 5 seconds ago" and this was not true. So why would it say that?
Also, whats the deal with TorPM? People on SR give these TorPM addresses but the service seems to be down. So what is the alternative? Would you recommend TORchat? Have you thought about running your own dedicated mail service, so business is not hindered by TorMail outages? Sorry for rambling on, but there are lots of things the FAQ does not cover. I want to do business here, but all of these problems make me feel a little uneasy. What would happen if a vendor had the same login issues?! Why would some accounts just stop working, without any explanation? I know I am not the only person complaining about this because I have seen a vendor mention it on his profile and others are talking about it here on the forum.
Example:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=133191.msg958537#msg958537
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=141907.0
Then the moderator locks the thread--but THE PROBLEM IS NOT SOLVED because the cause has not been identified!! I have no problem with SR taking commission on every sale, but those commission funds should go towards making the system more reliable. And for christs sake will someone please tell the developers of this forum software to make it clearly show which forums you can post in and which ones you cant, with mouseover help, color coding or something. Lots of other sites use this same web app and it drives people crazy trying to figure out where the missing "new topic" button is. And please make the forum path/name larger, you practically need a microscope to read it on a small screen.
Alright guys Im done ranting; cant wait to see what comments and suggestions you all may have :)
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captcha isn't case sensitive but it appears to time out, so if you open a page then post straight away. If you leave the page sitting for a while, refresh the page to get a new captcha before you start to post. you can refresh it prior to posting and it will retain most of what you type (there does seem to be a time triggered save as you type, so it's not instantaneous)
I don't know about the search timeout but sometimes I'll get an error telling me it won't let me post because there's been 0 seconds between posts - even when it's been 10 minutes or more. I just go back a page so I can see the post, refresh it to get a new captcha and then submit it.
the captcha is the last thing to appear when the page refreshes so if you don't give it enough time then you'll find it will reject because you've got the old one in there and it's decided it wants a new one.
fun huh? ;)
and the captcha timed out on me in the time it took to write this so you'd better be nimble!
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I do not know why you are having issues logging in, it happens sometimes to all of us, just make sure you are using the correct URL that you can find in the FAQ sticky at the top of this board.
Re the captcha it is not case sensitive, there have been times I have tried multiple time sure I am entering it correctly and it just refreshes then eventually it works fine, could be my fat fingers or something else, honestly I do not know.
If you get the last search message just hit page back and try again, I know this feature is a bit of an issue as this message pops up often, it may just be an issue with the simple machines software.
Re tormail, this has nothing to do with SR so I cannot help you.
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As to your main site login issue, yes it's a problem, an annoying one not a massive one. Sometimes I know I've typed everything word perfect and it still tells me login failed try again :) It's a bitch, but I've never had to do it more than a few times. If it's not working, refresh the login page to get new captcha and give it another go.
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sometimes I'll get an error telling me it won't let me post because there's been 0 seconds between posts
Sometimes I know I've typed everything word perfect and it still tells me login failed
OK, I see what abby is talking about here. The exact message is:
"The last posting from your IP was less than 0 seconds ago. Please try again later."
And if I press the back button to try submitting the message again, then it says:
"The following error or errors occurred while posting this message:
The letters you typed don't match the letters that were shown in the picture."
Then I cannot refresh the CAPTCHA, so I have to go back to the forum index and start my post all over again. This is ridiculous, and really aggravating. There needs to be a concerted effort by the site ops to solve these user interface problems. Now from the message given here, it looks like some of these errors are related to the server's inability to distinguish one IP address from another. But isnt that what cookies are for? So the server can keep track of a user as they navigate the site, so you dont transmit data to the wrong visitor? I mean, this kind of suggests that some transaction data is going to be lost if the server cannot distinguish between the actions of different users. Now why is this a problem here? Does anyone else see the same thing happening with shopping carts and forums on the clear web via TOR? Even on the onion sites, this problem seems isolated to SR and BMR.
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with that 0 second time out, sometimes if I give it a minute I can just replace the captcha, other times I have to create a new post (which, as you point out, is a pita).
The joys of modern technology ;)
lol and I got the 0 second time out when I went to post this. It knew I was grumbling about it!
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When I get the times out message I click on page back, highlight my post and copy it just in case, refresh the page and then try again. Usually works after one or two attempts and if for some reason your post vanishes you can just paste it into the post again without having to retype it.