What does "save draft" actually do?

[Mr Gharial]

Almost 5 years now I've spent on ZooChat and I've never quite known what this little button actually does:


It saves a draft of the post you're writing, yes? Then how do you access that draft? Today I've been typing quite a long post and despite clicking the "save draft" button a few times during writing, the draft is now gone after I accidentally clicked the wrong button and left the site.

I've had a few times where I left the site, without clicking the save draft button, and came back to see my draft still waiting for me. So why not now? And if the "save draft" button doesn't actually save your draft in the same way the automatic draft save does, what does it do?

 

[MOG2012]

Sometimes, the draft automatically saves. I don't know why it doesn't save but that's happened to me before. It's really annoying. I wrote so much but it didn't save. I would suggest asking a moderator for help

 

[Coelacanth18]

I've never used that function before. Automatic draft saving is something that I've also noticed to be hit or miss, and typically what I see happen is that if you don't keep editing it or post it soon enough - i.e. within a day, maybe two - it eventually erases itself.

If you're writing up a longer post that you don't think you'll finish in one sitting - a review, for example - I'd recommend writing it offline in Word or Sheets, and then copying it into the text box to post whenever you're ready to do so. Only annoying thing is that it can screw up some of the formatting, but if it's just regular paragraphs of text it's not too hard to edit quickly before posting.

 

[Zoofan15]

Almost 5 years now I've spent on ZooChat and I've never quite known what this little button actually does:
View attachment 776266

It saves a draft of the post you're writing, yes? Then how do you access that draft? Today I've been typing quite a long post and despite clicking the "save draft" button a few times during writing, the draft is now gone after I accidentally clicked the wrong button and left the site.

I've had a few times where I left the site, without clicking the save draft button, and came back to see my draft still waiting for me. So why not now? And if the "save draft" button doesn't actually save your draft in the same way the automatic draft save does, what does it do?

Sometimes, the draft automatically saves. I don't know why it doesn't save but that's happened to me before. It's really annoying. I wrote so much but it didn't save. I would suggest asking a moderator for help

The automatic save is invaluable when the page crashes and then has to reload. I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost the page for whatever reason and am relieved to see at least 90% of what I’ve just written has been saved for me.

Alternatively I’ve had the experience of the site auto-saving something I intended to abandon; but this can be avoided by deleting what I’ve written and then saving the post once it’s blank.

The save button works 99% of the time for me. If you draft a new thread; save it without posting; and then return, it will still be there when you click the create new thread button (I believe for up to 24 hours, but am open to correction on this parameter). Similarly for posts, if I saved something and came back a few hours later, it’s usually still there.

I will say though that for any post of volume, I save a draft elsewhere just to be safe. The save post button works 99% of the time for me; but I don’t wanna take even a 1% risk if something’s that’s taken me a significant amount of time to research/write.