Posts not appearing on discussion board

[NicoleS]

I'm not sure where to post this...
I posted a question in Excel on Friday (11-13-09).
I searched for all of my posts today, and that post isn't listed.
I then searched for all posts about concatenating (the subject of my
question). Again, my post wasn't there.

SO... I figured I must have done something wrong on Friday & reposted the
question earlier today.
Still can't find it.
The first thing I did was clear the cache & try again - but that didn't work.

Where are my posts?

Thanks

 

[om]

This happens very often on this site.. Anyway post your question again in
this thread..and do not forget to click on "Notify me of replies".

 

[Joe User]

Where are my posts?

First, please do not follow the advice of some people and keep reposting the
same question -- at least, not until you become skilled enough with the
interface that you use to correctly diagnose the problem.

It does no one any good. It splits the discussion and causes people to
duplicate their responses. And you still might lose track of the thread and
cannot find the answers that you want.

Second, at this moment, I have no problem finding your two most recent
postings in the MS Discussion Groups web interface. Click on the following
links.

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...59f6&mid=d262e791-00a1-44d5-bdd5-728783ff59f6

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...&p=1&tid=e8d63a86-6716-4eea-9031-83efe9cbaf44

I found those by searching the MSNews server (msnews.microsoft.com) to find
the threads, then manually searching the MSDG web interface. The MSDG
search function failed to find those two particular threads, although it did
find other threads that you (or someone with the same user id) initiated on
6/17/2009, 1/16/2009, 12/29/2008 and two on 12/4/2008. Obviously, the MSDG
search function is not very reliable; no surprise there.

Even though I find your two most recent postings now, it is possible that
these threads were not always accessible using the MSDG interface. I have
had the same experience using the MSNews server.

With the latter, self-described experts have explained to me that what we
perceive as a single server is actually two or more computers or computer
clusters, and that either postings should be mirrored onto two or more disk
arrays, or they should be accessible to all of the computers through shared
disks.

They explain that postings seem to disappear and perhaps reappear later when
operations switch from one server or cluster to another.

I cannot vouch for such explanations, since I have no direct knowledge of
either the MSDG or MSNews server. However, as a computer architect, I can
tell you that such arrangements are common in the design of servers and
clusters that are intended to be highly accessible and highly reliable. And
I can tell you that problems of that nature are possible, although they
should be rare in the best redundancy designs.

(It would not surprise me if the MSDG and MSNews servers do not employ "best
redundancy designs". It is unusual for a company to invest much in the
maintenance of news servers, unless it part of their core business.)


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