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I was working on my latest puzzle for Puzzling.SE, and I decided to take a break and do something off-computer. Having had some minor difficulties with the draft auto-save on the SE network before, I decided to copy and paste my progress into a text document. At that time, I had 30-40 lines of text in the submission box, and had been on a different window for several minutes. According to this post, all of my revisions should have been saved. However, upon returning to PSE to work on the question some more, I found that only a few lines had been saved:

Current autosave

Hopefully relevant and helpful information:

  • Browser: Firefox Quantum 68.0.1 (64-bit)

  • Device: Asus laptop running Windows 10 version 1809 (yes, I know I need to update)

  • About 1/4 to 1/3 of the lines in the partially completed post were copy-pasted; the rest were hand-typed.

  • Around 35 lines were in the submission box when I closed my browser window.

  • Only four remained when I came back 60-90 minutes later.

  • When I closed the window, I got the Leave page? prompt from Firefox, to which I initially replied 'no' to out of habit.

  • My internet connection is good - around 41 ms of latency.

  • The posted question has just been completed and can be found here.

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3
  • The draft feature does rely on JavaScript to send the content to the server. For it to work flawlessly your browser, computer, network, multiple Internet Service Providers, the Stack Exchange network and server all need to be available. If one of those components fail, any errors are suppressed so you'll never know if your draft was saved a few seconds ago or 20 minutes ago.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 15:05
  • 1
    @rene if that's the case maybe the draft feature needs an upgrade, perhaps?
    – Brandon_J
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:24
  • I had that happen once on Quantum Computing, I ended up rewriting a shorter version. Now if something is lengthy I select-all and copy (so there's a copy in more than one place).
    – Rob
    Commented Sep 9, 2019 at 17:50

1 Answer 1

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It is clear that the draft wasn't saved due to the absence of the Draft Saved text:

image

The draft is saved every 45 seconds:

We save drafts automatically for all new answers and new questions once every 45 seconds.

A possibility is:

  1. You were working on the question
  2. The draft was saved
  3. You carried on typing
  4. The draft wasn't saved due to an error as pointed out in the comments:

The draft feature does rely on JavaScript to send the content to the server. For it to work flawlessly your browser, computer, network, multiple Internet Service Providers, the Stack Exchange network and server all need to be available. If one of those components fail, any errors are suppressed so you'll never know if your draft was saved a few seconds ago or 20 minutes ago.

  1. You left the window with the draft unsaved
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7
  • it has been a while, but I'm fairly certain I remember waiting for "draft saved" before closing the window.
    – Brandon_J
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:43
  • @Brandon_J ok, i'll remove that part but that is the only feasible explanation in my opinion
    – user707129
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:44
  • Nah you can keep it. It's quite possible I remembered wrongly
    – Brandon_J
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:45
  • @Brandon_J ok, will do
    – user707129
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:45
  • Do you know if the draft saving process is supposed to work when you're on a different tab browser tab (but the SE page is open)?
    – Brandon_J
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:48
  • @Brandon_J Not sure, but according to my tests it won't
    – user707129
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:51
  • I think that must have been my mistake, then.
    – Brandon_J
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 16:52

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