"That wasn't me!!!! I only clicked once!" Topic

the machine did it.

I have experimented with this for around a year and am as positive as I can be its multiple submits by the sender.

Ghost in the Machine … the TMP Bug … been there did that … got the T-shirt !

The machine liked your post.

Ooooh, we need a T-shirt!

How about an old style desktop, with TMP across the screen and a "Kilroy was here" type bug poking his head up from the back of the screen.

Which machine?

There are likely a dozen or so machines between yours and the server TMP is hosted on. Each way. And which ones they are can (and sometimes do) change packet to packet. Not complete message to complete message, just at the lowest level atomic data interchange for the protocol. Sometimes the data transmission fails and some machine in the path retries with a new copy. Sometimes sometimes that "fail" unfails itself. At a smaller level, there is a similar, less dynamic, but not purely deterministic path between your mouse button and whatever barfs info out of your computer toward the Internet. The UI and UE are just the tip of the iceberg.

Just click SUBMIT once and have faith in the power of the Internet.

When editing, click CHANGE, followed by DONE, and have faith in the Internet.

Ignore any "Form Resubmission Requests" resulting from you hitting F5 to refresh the page, or hitting the Back Button

The Internet is smart. Smarter than you!
It knows what it's doing. Trust it! :-)

Stryderg +1 [Bill I think he's got a good idea here !]

Stryderg +1 I third the motion. Give us a T shirt Bill.

My best guess is that the server, at a moment of high traffic, is unable to complete the required action (posting the message), and restarts the process… which results in one or more duplicate messages/topics.

One interesting wrinkle is that sometimes the duplicate topics have different ID numbers than the original topic, and sometimes they share the same ID number.

It's aliens … or the former KGB ?

BOTH, remember, "Tell Vlad I'll be more flexible able November."

duplicate topics have different ID numbers than the original topic

That behaviour is most likely from some intermediate transmission node replicating the message before it gets to the processing server. The duplicates will come in with different packet numbers, and thus will be seen as different data streams by the processing server.

Still, there are dozens of system of systems behaviours that could cause dupe posting and every dupe is not the result of the same unexpected behavioural profile.

I don't support the alien theory. I support the small, vile, supernatural entity theory and the KGB theory. Gremlins from the Kremlin.

I have heard that "theory" von Schwartz … As time goes by the "truth" makes itself known …

Gremlins from the Kremlin.

Needs to be on Red T-shirt !