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Happened on this question; https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128852/auto-redirect-to-ban-page/128853#128853

I composed an answer while on the mobile site, and submitted it. It submits, except that I see a 'closed by .... 7 mins ago'. Which is strange, cos closed questions aren't receptive to answers.

Pretty big loophole, it seems.

enter image description here

Update: (credit @lunboks) It seems that this is a client-side restriction, which is disabled on mobile. It can most probably be bypassed even on the full site using Chrome insprctor and/or Firebug.

Even though I'm an amateur programmer, I do know that such stuff done on the client side is a Very Bad Thing. I say that there should be an extra server-side block. If the poster gets past the clientside block via mobile site or other tomfoolery, he should get the page reloaded with 'Sorry, the post is closed &c'(iirc a similar thing happens for deleted posts). Try to keep the attempted answer somewhere there, since they may want to copy their hard work.

The possible dupe talks about a grace period, but that's inconsistent with what the main site does(disable answer submit button on close--via websockets I guess)

It seems that if you wait long enough, trying to hack-post on a closed question gives you this: enter image description here

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  • Hmm. I've voted to re-open since I just discovered that the normal site does disable your answer button if the question is closed. (This can be bypassed, but that's beside the point.)
    – a cat
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:50
  • @lunboks thanks, updated question.
    – Manishearth
    Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 0:39

1 Answer 1

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If you started composing your answer before the question was closed, you get up to 4 hours to finish and submit it, even if it does end up being closed in the meantime.

That is most likely what happened here. When using the normal site, you get a notification that the question has been closed and answers aren't being accepted anymore, but this is a client-side restriction which I guess does not exist on the mobile site.

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8
  • Is this a Meta only thing? Because I could swear that the opposite happened to me quite a few times on the main site.
    – Dennis
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:21
  • 2
    @Dennis On the full site, the post heartbeat will detect when a question's been closed and disable the user's ability to post when it can, but the backend still has this grace period (though I thought it had been significantly shortened; I might be wrong on that).
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:22
  • @tim - "post heartbeat" - are you referring to the new real-time-updates functionality?
    – Lix
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:23
  • @Lix No, the questions page has, for quite a while, sent an AJAX request every ~45 seconds after you start typing in the editor (which the draft functionality piggybacks on).
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:25
  • @TimStone As a 10k user you're probably aware, but I just tested this. Your answer button does get disabled, even on meta, but you can just re-enable it with Firebug or similar trickery. I'm guessing my initial answer was wrong and the mobile site does not restrict you in this way.
    – a cat
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:47
  • Aye. I imagine the mobile version doesn't bother with the client side disabling for the same reason that it uses localStorage for the drafts, since the heartbeat would consume data without the user realising it.
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 18:53
  • Yeah, I though that this was it--but didn't have a desktop to test it on via inspector.
    – Manishearth
    Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 0:26
  • @Tim aah thats why mobile drafts don't sync with the desktop version at times (though the other way around does happen)
    – Manishearth
    Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 0:47

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