Problem with editing and saving CircuitLab schematics

Question

I have the following problem which has become frequent lately and is driving me crazy.

When I am editing a schematic, finally I want to save it, but the screen dims and the following message appears:

You can only save a schematic every 20 seconds, will retry shortly...

After that, it says

Saving image...

and what is most annoying is that one of the images disappears while another one appears duplicated.

What could be the cause of this problem?

---

EDIT 1: There is another annoying problem that has appeared - it does not allow me to exit the editing without saving the schematic, even though it asks me if I want to or not, and I choose no.

As a conclusion: I can accept waiting 20 seconds, but not having my work destroyed.

EDIT 2: The problem continues to exist. With enormous effort, over two days, I managed to assemble my last answer using the following techniques:

• I reproduced schematics not by copying the text, but the elements of the schematics in edit mode. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this helping to solve the problem.

• After editing a schematic, I waited several minutes before saving it, not just 20 seconds as the on-screen message advised (I killed time by drinking coffee, browsing my phone, watching TV, even napping on the sofa :-). Generally, it helped, but not always.

• I saved (dozens of times) the entire page in Google Docs before saving the schematic.

• I closed the Chrome tab, then opened it and pasted the saved page. In most cases, it had an effect.

The most disgusting thing of all was that not only did it not save the edited schematic, but it destroyed several schematics.

EDIT 3: The problem persists despite my efforts to find a solution. I contacted CircuitLab ([email protected]), specifically Humberto Evans, and they expressed their willingness to help.

EDIT 4: Three weeks after asking this question, I have not received a satisfactory answer (including from the EE meta section support regarding my first message to them a week ago). No one else reports a similar problem. And it continues to bother me...

Screenshot

It is as if this is some kind of "malicious bot" whose task is to prevent me from creatively using CircuitLab in my answers and ultimately discourage me from contributing. It starts bothering me a few minutes after I start working with CircuitLab in the way I described above. This forces me to perform the following tedious sequence of actions every time I save a schematic:

• copy the page in the clipboard,
• close the browser tab,
• open the tab,
• paste the clipboard.

I have to do this sequence dozens of times while creating my answer, which takes me much longer than usual.

I don't want to believe this, because if it is true, it would be pointless. It should be the exact opposite: if there is such a bot, it should not hinder me, but help me in my efforts to use CircuitLab even more creatively in my answers.

EDIT 5: Today, I managed with great difficulty to produce my latest answer regarding CMFBA, because just a few minutes after I started working, the problem reappeared and began to plague me. I had to repeatedly save my progress, and even then, I had to redraw one of the schematics.

I am out of ideas on how to get rid of this evil that is hounding me. I would be very grateful if you could help me understand what the problem is and how I can solve it.

EDIT 6: I can't fight this anymore. I can't even upload a screenshot here, so I am putting a Google Drive link. Can anyone explain what is happening?

Failed to upload

EDIT 7: This morning, I tried uploading schematics from a different computer, at a different location (different IP address). I also tried using a different browser (Opera) instead of Chrome. The result was the same.

I have notified support with a second message about the inability to upload schematics and images.

I am awaiting intervention from the relevant personnel to resolve this issue, which has now become a significant problem for me.

EDIT 8: OK, it is already fixed...

• Voltage Spike: Are you changing the schematic more than every 20 seconds?
• Circuit fantasist: @Voltage Spike, In most cases no, but sometimes yes.
• Circuit fantasist: @Voltage Spike, The problem is that I still can't figure out when it happens; I don't see any pattern. So far, my observation is that it happens completely randomly. I feel a bit stressed by this and start editing every schematic with anxiety because I expect it to be deleted upon saving. However, I'm starting to monitor it more closely and will share my observations.
• Circuit fantasist: @Voltage Spike, I just did an experiment with my answer that I am preparing for this question. I edited the schematic and waited 8 minutes before saving it. It showed me the message again and, as usual, destroyed my work.
• Chester Gillon: The old answer Is there a problem with CircuitLab "Save and Insert" today? suggests a possible work-around to avoid loosing work - Not just today — I've been experiencing this issue intermittently for several weeks now. I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu. It's gotten to the point where I "select all" and copy my schematic to the clipboard before trying to "Save and Insert" — at least that way, if it crashes and burns, I have a chance to open a new tab and try again without having to redo everything from scratch.
• Voltage Spike: @Circuitfantasist I need some easy way to replicate the problem so others can try it
• Math Keeps Me Busy: I also experience that bug. What I often do when editing an answer with multiple CircuitLab schematics is save a copy of my answer with cntrl A, cntrl C before editing a schematic, and if the answer goes bonkers I can restore it to a last known good version.
• Russell McMahon: Backing up the whole answer is a good idea. I try to do that in any online system I deal with as everything throws things away sometimes. Sometimes I don't manage :-( . || In this case you can duplicate the circuit code in the answer so that at worst, if one copy gets destroyed the other is still there in pre-edited form.
• Russell McMahon: @Circuitfantasist I have very occasionally duplicated diagrams while editing using simple copy and paste. The system may (perhaps) keep better track of potential duplicates that way.
• Hearth: Have you considered that it might be a problem with your computer or your web browser? The fact that no one else seems to have this issue would seem to indicate something on your end as the culprit.
• vir: CircuitLab glitches out on me sometimes too; I just chalk it up to my adblocker, or PiHole, or just "software", rather than some grand conspiracy to prevent me from posting.
• Tim Williams: I just had this happen today, but only for the one circuit, which it turns out saved into the answer anyway (system thought the operation failed) so nothing was lost at least. I have had it happen in the past, but that was back around either CircuitLab updates, or when changing over image hosts; it's been largely stable since. Could be various spooky reasons, connectivity, caching, etc.? Dunno.
• Circuit fantasist: @Tim Williams, Here is a screenshot with a message and console (this time the problem appeared immediately, and I managed to take a screenshot).
• Chester Gillon: I had the "You can only save a schematic every 20 seconds, will retry shortly..." message appear multiple times yesterday creating an answer which involved multiple saves, while iterating between updating the CircuitLab Schematic (including a simulation) and editing the text in the answer. When got the message just waited patiently and the update got saved after maybe a max of 40 seconds. I didn't loose any updates to the schematic, but at one point after the schematic was saved the answer only contained the schematic. Ctrl-Z in the editor then restored the text of the answer.
• Chester Gillon: The "Failed to upload the schematic image" error might have been related to Uploads to SE image servers have started failing

Answer 1

I register my dissatisfaction with this post (see original edit):

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/755294/311631

So, still not solved I guess.

• Circuit fantasist: Tim Williams, I am happy there is someone else who has the courage to point out that this 4-month-old problem has not been solved. For now, the simple CTRL+Z trick from @Chester Gillon is the only thing that helps, but I am losing a lot of time waiting and with annoying manipulations.

Answer 2

Almost two months after asking this question, I haven't received a satisfactory answer, excluding the comments from Math Keeps Me Busy and Chester Gillon. Therefore, I've decided to try and provide a (presumed) answer myself. Here are four key takeaways:

• It appears that under certain circumstances, traffic needs to be limited. At such times, the message "You can only save a schematic every 20 seconds, will retry shortly..." appears. Since there's no official explanation of what exactly it means, what causes it, or what to do when it appears, we're forced to interpret it ourselves. In my opinion, it means you cannot upload a schematic if at least 20 seconds haven't passed since the previous upload.
• If it truly is 20 seconds, this delay would be tolerable, though a bit annoying, like any restriction. My problem is that for me, it's not 20 seconds, but several minutes! This practically makes my work impossible.
• The lack of an adequate response from SE EE and any response at all from CircuitLab, as well as the absence of similar complaints from other contributors and the reluctance to help, leads me to believe that this severe problem exists only for me. It's as if the software recognizes my IP and starts functioning in the described manner several minutes after I begin working.
• If this is the case, my explanation is as follows: I use CircuitLab in a different way than usual, in the form of construction scenarios where the idea is revealed sequentially, step by step. Thus, CircuitLab simulations prevail over textual explanations. For some reason, this might not be liked, and a way to limit it might be sought. However, this should be reasoned and discussed, if only out of respect for what I've created in SE EE over the past 10 years.

See also a related question.

• Math Keeps Me Busy: Regarding the "only save ... 20 secs" message, I have often received that and I am definitely not saving that often. My assumption is that someone else saved just before my attempt, and the system does not distinguish. Perhaps all EESE users are treated as a single CircuitLab user? Not all CircuitLab saves will show up as an EESE edit, so I can't really verify that others are saving just before I try.
• Circuit fantasist: @That's a very interesting take on the problem, it wouldn't have occurred to me. I'm trying to remember when this message started appearing. Maybe it was episodic at first and I didn't notice it, then gradually it got worse. It would be appropriate for technical support to provide clarification on this issue here in the meta section, given that there are complaints.
• Circuit fantasist: @Voltage Spike, I'm back from vacation, ready to contribute to your site. Imagine my surprise to find the restriction's still there! Any chance we could get those normal working conditions going?
• Jim J. Jewett: Based on a cursory look at your screenshot, it could well be a general overload message that just has too specific of an error message. That might involve other users, or it might be counting text changes as triggering a "save", but it also might just be that javascript is running "too slowly" on your machine. Which in turn might be because you have more schematics per post than they expect, but also might be related to other tabs or other processes running on your machine. And RGB value turning into "!" could be caused by this plus an error-handling framework.
• Jim J. Jewett: The top-level optout failing on cross-site origin is also consistent with general (or javascript-specific) overload and too strict of a timeout. But that failure to load a resource from perfectaudience suggests that ads are contributing to the overload. Many ads do use atrocious or invalid javascript, but this is much worse for some ad sources -- including some that bid based on the user's identity -- so it would be less surprising if ad-related problems showed up only for a subset of users.
• Circuit fantasist: @Jim J. Jewett, Thank you for the detailed analysis! I am not a specialist in this field. I can only say that for a person encountering this problem for the first time, the stress is significant because what was created with a lot of effort is being destroyed. This is the inexplicable part - why the page gets damaged at the end (it's good, at least, that it can be restored with CTRL Z). The silence of those responsible is inexplicable; they should at least say what the problem is and what can be done.