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The Bug Catchers Net: Q2 2023

Hello Meta!

We really appreciate you sharing bugs (big and small) so we can keep our site running smoothly. Here's our new folder!

For an inside peak on how we do things, as sometimes it may seem like nothing happens with these, this is what we do with your bugs:

  1. I write up your bug in a report for our QA and Developer teams.
  2. QA works their magic to replicate the bug. If we can't make it happen again, we can't figure out how it went wrong.
  3. Once we know exactly what's wrong, QA sends the bug report to our developers where it gets ranked against all the work the developers do (which is a lot). Bugs that are annoying but not preventing the site from working will rank lower than something that prevents users from doing stuff. They also go up against long term projects, improvements, and general maintenance.
  4. Sometimes, if a bug isn't such a big deal and we have a project coming up that will have the developers poking around in the same pile of code, we'll set it aside for when that time comes.

Remember, share as much detail as you have about the bug (the more we know, the faster we can fix it):

  • Where you saw it (URL's are great!)
  • What you were trying to do and what happened instead.
  • Screenshots if you’ve got ‘em!

As always, thank you for your dedication to our site!

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Hi iFixit team,

I think I found something... interesting :-)

Bug description

There is something strange, I think it's an inconsistency in the iFixit's security system that handles if a tutorial can be accessed or not. I found some pages that are indexed or viewable but that cannot be accessed in the normal way.

Reproduce the bug, scenario 1

First I made the following search "ethernet" :

Here is a direct link to the search results on iFixit FR : https://fr.ifixit.com/Search?doctype=gui...

Then I clicked on this specific result :

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And... I got a 403, forbidden access page :

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The problem here is the tutorial is indexed, so it must be readable or it must not be indexed. But it should not be indexed and not readable, as this behavior is inconsistent.

Here is the link to the problematic tutorial : https://fr.ifixit.com/Guide/Remplacement...

Reproduce the bug, scenario 2

It seems this exact same bug is also affecting some guides but in a different (more problematic) way.

Let's take this guide as an example : https://fr.ifixit.com/Tutoriel/Toshiba+S...

On the following guide, we can observe there are some prerequisite guides, but if I click on the following prerequisite :

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I got the 403, forbidden access :

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Also, the content of this specific guide can be read here :

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Also, if I click on the "Edit" button, I also got the 403 error page.

Resources :

The problems in this context are :

  • It makes some guides "untranslatable", because if one of the prerequisite guides of a tutorial cannot be translated, the guide that inherits the bugged prerequisite guide will not be able to be completely translated so it cannot be viewed as a translated guide as the translation is considered incomplete by the platform, so the guide remains in the original language instead of the partially translated one.
  • The content of this forbidden guide can be read under certain circumstances, when it is linked as a prerequisite guide of a guide that can be accessed, that's an inconsistent behavior because usually, prerequisite guides can be accessed and linked as prerequisite guides without this kind of issue.
  • The fact the content of a guide can be viewed but the page of the guide itself is not allowed to be accessed is a potential security issue.

Thanks for reading.

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This is an excellent write up, thank you for sharing. I'll pass this along to our developers.

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Hi iFixit team,

I found one that is WTF.

Bug description

It seems at least one guide contains circular reference to some prerequisite guides.

This causes the internationalization system to fail and changes are not detected for all related guides (directly or indirectly attached to it).

How to reproduce this one

This one is easy

Step 1 : Go to the French version of iFixit (https://fr.ifixit.com).

Step 2 : Then go to this page : https://fr.ifixit.com/Tutoriel/traduire/...

Step 3 : Then click on the prerequisite guide called "Toshiba Satellite A105-S4284 Speakers Replacement"

Step 4 : Then click on the prerequisite guide called "Toshiba Satellite A105-S4284 Keyboard Replacement"

Step 5 : Then click on the prerequisite guide called "Toshiba Satellite A105-S4284 Speakers Replacement"

Step 6 : Then click on the prerequisite guide called "Toshiba Satellite A105-S4284 Keyboard Replacement"

Step 7 : etc.

We're running to an endless timelines paradox :-)

The problem

It seems the platform handle circular references because it doesn't crash (at least for the final user's side).

But this produce changes detection is not triggered for all guides that are linked to these two guides.

Indeed, everything is translated here on this given device page : https://fr.ifixit.com/Device/Toshiba_Sat...

A lot of guides appeared as untranslated (but are 100% translated for the given device page).

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(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Also, technically or user speaking, having a circular reference between prerequisite guides makes no sense because it means the device can be torn down forever, a trip to hell in a nutshell

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"a trip to hell in a nutshell" ^_^

I'll pass this along to the developers, as well. Again, thank you for the amazing reproduction steps!!

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After logging in again through google it created a new account for me instead of logging me in.

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My guess is that this happened because I recently changed the email address connected to my google account.

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I'll have this looked into. Thanks @sedorr!

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huh??

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wait...

the entire unanswered page just changed??? (this question was the first one on there, but now its gone...)

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@timtomissus shows good for me. Yours back up?

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I encountered this bug on this page.

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This anniversary banner has garbled text.

I am currently using Firefox in android with the dark reader add-on installed.

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Interesting, it seem's it's related to a double UTF-8 encoding.

So this bug is related to the charset handling.

Example :

If I utf8_decode this "Wir feiern Jubiläum!" I get this : "Wir feiern Jubiläum!" (this can help devs)

I got the same without DarkReader installed, so it's not related to a browser extension. I bet for backend-side bug or a copy pasted text with an incompatible charset :-)

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There is a known bug that is messing with some languages. I'll add this to the issue—thanks!

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Actually, there was a fix deployed today between your post and mine that should have resolved it. Let me know if you see it again.

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Not sure if this is a bug, but I don’t think the „Besonderer Dank geht an diese Übersetzer:innen:“ is supposed to be this light.

I’m using Firefox on iPad.

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Shared, thanks @sedorr!

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I don't think it is, no. I've added that to the list of improvements we'll want to make, and it just about made it into the top 10 coding-related issues ;-) I hope we'll be able to tackle it soon!

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I just noticed that that badges haven't been showing up in my activity tab for a month now, even though I've been getting a bunch of new badges. It's the same thing for meta.

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I'll file this bug, thanks!

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@amber since reporting this all acievements up to the 25.5.2023 showed up, but new badges after that still don't show up.

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This started happening today. It doesn't happen always but it does most of the time.

It can happen anywhere in the site and also happens on meta, though on meta it only happened on the user page so far.

I'm using Firefox on android with the dark reader add-on.

Update:

I just checked, it seems like it has to do with the dark reader add-on as it doesn't happen when I turn it off, though it I lay happens on your site so far.

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There are some known issues with dark-readers on our site. It's been looked at and I think it's a pretty complicated thing for us to fix just now.

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https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mitsubishi+...

On this guide the comment count is at zero even though there are 3 comments.

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That is confusing, thanks for pointing it out, @sedorr.

That comment count is for guide comments (the list at the very bottom of the guide) where as the comments you're referring to are step comments. I'll look this over with the team to see if there's a better way to describe that count to make more sense.

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I mentioned this bug in an earlier Bug Folder, but it still hasn't been resolved.

When you hover over a reputation graph of a user, it no longer shows the rep count at the date you're hovering over.

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Hi @guardian10, thanks for checking in on this.

We have a small team of programmers and they can only fix so much. Each bug gets investigated and then ranked by importance.

Things that break the site or prevent site use come first. This bug is annoying, but cosmetic so it ranks lower and they haven't had time to dig into it yet.

I'll go ask around on Monday to see if anyone has looked at the issue yet.

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This one seems a little weird. I just logged out by accident, and I couldn't get back in since the "sign in with google" button was missing.

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Tried refreshing the page with no change. It only reappeared once I tried to post a question about it and the site prompted me to log in

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Hey @darthmango, are you still having this issue? Can you share what operating system and browser you're using?

If you are still having the problem, email me at community@ifixit.com and I can disconnect google and help you sign in by just typing in your email address and password for now.

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@amber No, I got back in when the button reappeared. As for the OS and browser (probably should have included that, sorry), I'm on ChromeOS 113.0.5672.114, and Google Chrome with the DuckDuckGo extension

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I just noticed this, and I don't think it should normally be possible to have the delta be lower than the count since the minimum rep per count is 1, right?

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There is a daily rep limit, so it's possible you passed it that day.

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You probably already know about this, but you can't access parts wikis anymore, if they have a supplier link. Once the link is added, all clickable options now only lead to the first parts supplier in the list, no longer to the wiki itself.

Update:

Let’s take this guide as an example, since it has both accessible and inaccessible wikis.

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Normally you can access parts wikis by pressing on spaces marked green.

But on parts wikis with a supplier link you can press on any of the spaces marked red and it will always lead you to the supplier site.

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Can you send me an example link, please? Thanks @sedorr!

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@amber Sure, I added a link and picture.

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Not sure if this is a Firefox problem or an ifixit Problem but on Firefox for android the preview pictures it shows for wiki pages don't match the actual wiki most of the time.

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I'll pass this along so it gets looked into.

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https://de.ifixit.com/Artikel/Verlauf/Wo...

I don't know if this is a bug or how the contributions system works but @annicka only added one comma but got ⅓ contribution. It would be fine if it considers her patrol approvals as in part her contribution as well, but I don't think it does, no?

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Probably, for those item pages, the system would consider title and intro as one third, text block as another third, and the reference links as another. Unfortunately, the amount of changes in the paragraph isn't taken into consideration, just the fact whether there are changes or not. I totally agree that it's completely unfair and should be changed, but I'm not sure how much of a priority we can give it, as item pages are so rarely translated. I'll take it in to the backlog nonetheless!

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When I filter my activity tab for guide translation revisions it just gives me normal guide edits.

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Translations are actually considered "edits" in most of the code. I didn't even realize we had the option to filter for them in the activity tab. I'll add that to the queue, however, and thank you very much for your noticing!!

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https://www.ifixit.com/Team/Members/4670...

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https://www.ifixit.com/Team/Members/4706...

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In Team pages it says that I have 87 Guides even though I actually have 46 Gudes

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@sedorr This number does not work precisely as you may expect. We are looking at any guide revision that:

* Is current

* Is a revision made by you

The nuance is the word revision. We are counting any edits you may have made which are still the most recent.

Thus, we will include active edits and created guides in the count on this page.

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Just noticed a small anomaly on the home page. The search bar has the text overlapping with the icon.

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Also with Dark Reader turned off

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https://de.ifixit.com/Device/Tchibo_Cafi...

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I don't know if this is a bug, but I didn't know that it was possible to add categories to device pages that are not categorized...

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You can! Here's an overview of what can be done in device categories: https://about.ifixit.com/c/Device_Catego.... Some of the permissions might be restricted to certain roles or reputation limits, but you should be able to do most of that!

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https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Silk%27n_S...

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when I press on „one other contributor“ on this page I get a 404.

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That's interesting because it actually does work in the german interface, which is where that device was originally created in...

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https://www.ifixit.com/Patrol/Guide/1620...

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If I go to this patrol entry that probably doesn't exist anymore because the guide it belonged to was spam It says server error instead of 404.

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At this point it's redirecting to just the patrol log, so there may have actually been an error that was resolved.

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Hi @amber

A "missing" question or two?

I moderated the now deleted answer in this question to a new question in ifixit and then supplied an answer to it.

It shows up in my subscribed list but not in the ifixit Answers list of questions.

Also the OP asked another question about the same phone which I moderated as duplicate as it seems a similar question to the first, which doesn't show up either, at least not in the english forum

Cheers

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But it does in the Spanish one: https://es.ifixit.com/Respuestas. If I remember correctly, we specified in the code that if more than one phrase was detected in a foreign language, the respective post shall be moved to the respective subdomain. Afaik we don't have the possibility to show it in more than one interface or subdomain at a time, so for now we kind of tell it to prioritize the foreign languages because we have way less content there and in this case, both the title and question were Spanish only.

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@sandrahiller

Thank you for the explanation as to what happened.

Hopefully I will remember this, if it happens again

Cheers

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I just got the "Master Of Manuals" badge even though I only got 10 reputation today.

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Yes, but you hit the limit the day before: I'd suspect it's a mere mixup with when automators run in the Pacific Time Zone vs ours?

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@sandrahiller could be, but usually I'd get it as soon as I reach the limit, not at the end of the day, so I guess something is still weird...

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@sedorr Did you observe anything similar over the past 4 weeks again? If not, it might have been a one time hiccup?

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@sandrahiller I noticed that I sometimes get batches of achievements some hours after I've done something, but nothing showing up the next day, no.

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@sandrahiller I just got a "Nice Answer" badge on meta, even though haven't had any upvotes in over 24 hours. The weird thing is that there were two upvotes within a couple minutes from each other yesterday and I got the badge for one of them about an hour after the upvotes.

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I got an activity log from the future.

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This screenshot was taken at 10:39 ET on 6/28/23 in case that is relevent.

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@guardian10 interesting. Are you ET? Your log has that particular activity listed at 7:23 pm. Any possibility that this showed your local time?

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Passing this along, thanks!!

It's possible that it's just logged at a different time because our servers operate on a different time zone than ET (or even PST.)

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https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/Bootload...

The german translation is still there even though this guide was taken down as a duplicate some time ago.

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Passing this to our translation team to triage and pass along. Thanks @sedorr!

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@sedorr many thanks for the hint. We know the bug, which will be addressed sooner or later by the dev team.

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https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/verlauf/...

You cann press on the "changes over time" link on the german site even though this guide is english. This will just lead you to back to the newest translation of the guide.

https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/How+to+t...

It does add the revision part to the URL, just that it ignores it until you switch to english.

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https://de.ifixit.com/Device/Bearbeiten/...

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If I try to edit a wiki translation after I have alredy submitted an edit it will tell me that I can't edit it because the version I am editing isn't current.

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@sedorr many thanks for the hint. Same thing here: the bug is known and will be addressed sooner or later by the dev team. I see in the wiki history that the translation has been accepted and edited meanwhile. Let us know if you need again to edit a pending wiki translation :)

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@sedorr the bug has been fixed now, so you can go ahead editing wiki translations before them being patrolled :)

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hi all! havent been on much recently lol

basically, i cant get to my ifixit acc becuase i cant even use the website...

clicking anything, such as notifications, my acc, the ifixit logo, all redirect me to ifixit.com/# ....?

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but if i type in that url directly... it just doesnt exist?

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im on google chrome 114.0.5735.198 on Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (yep changed my OS again lol) on a HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2

help?

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@timtomissus and I thought you had taken the summer off :-) Glad to see you back!

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Hi there! The broken page is because your URL is wrong, you're going to www.ifixit/# rather than www.fixit.com/#

Are you still having the issue with not being able to click on anything? I've reported this bug in the mean time.

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@amber i am, but ive found a way to bypass it by just going straight to the answers forum

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https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mitsubishi+...

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When I try to load this guide it loads the introduction and title but they just disappear immediately after.

I'm using firefox 115.0.2 with the duckduckgo addon and adblock plus.

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Thanks for noticing. We are deploying a fix now. It should be fixed in shortly

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https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mitsubishi

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Wiki thumbnails with relatively large monotonous areas, such as logos, have something like compression artifacts, even though they are not visible when looking at the image file.

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Interesting, I'll pass this along. Thanks!

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https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Edit/Mitsu...

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Sometimes the editor just likes to add a bunch of empty lines between the text and flags that you can't remove. They will even stay behind when the flags are no longer there.

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Another interesting find that I've passed a long, thank you!

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When I search for "AVM" on the german site only German device wikis show up. Tranlated devices, like the FritzBox don't show up, even though they also have "AVM" in their summary description.

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It seems like translated devices only get searched by title, and the summary description won't get searched.

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Thanks for the input @sedorr! We pass it along to the devs.

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Not sure if this is a bug, or not, but every time I close and reopen the browser on my iPad I have to login again.

I’m using Firefox 115.0 (32242) with tracking protection set to strict (though it has always been on strict).

Edit:

It’s kind of weird, after opening the browser and navigating to the iFixit page, I’m not logged in. But if I then reload the page I’m suddenly logged in. Though it won’t log me in if I just press on the profile icon, then it will prompt me for my password. I have to reload.

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Is this something that's only been happening recently? Any guesses on when it began?

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@amber I would say yesterday, or the the day before yesterday, not too long ago.

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@amber I just noticed that it logs me back in after reloading the page. Kind of weird.

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@amber it might be a Firefox problem, since I’ve just noticed that the same thing is happening with the Crowdin site.

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