We’ve been having this problem for a while and I wonder if anyone else does too. At first, I really thought it was user error, but I am not 100% convinced it is not.
We have a very busy site (over 50 authors and between 15 and 20 entries a day plus over 100 comments.) I haven’t found a pattern yet, but about once every 2-3 weeks and entry will suddenly have its comments and trackbacks turned off.
I long ago hid the Comment and Trackback settings for our authors. Only a very few even know these settings exist on a per-entry basis. So I am 100% sure they aren’t turning the comments off themselves.
In order to reactivate the comments, we always have to go into the entry, unhide the comment and trackback settings, check the boxes, and resave the entry.
Anyone else experiencing this problem?
Reported on Movable Type 4.2
I think I'd be looking closely at the server logs. This is not normal behaviour for Movable Type and it's something I've never heard of before.
Have you tried logging in as some of these users and seeing what they can see in the entry editor?
There is nothing in the logs and yes, I've tried logging in as them. They do not have the comments and trackbacks settings. Most of these folks don't even know there are individual settings.
I've done a lot of investigation on this and it seems that, perhaps, there are some hidden inputs that aren't getting read and/or populated properly on occasion.
Check your database and see what values entry_allow_comments and entry_allow_trackbacks have on them for the entries in question, then.
I've done all of this. I'm saying these settings get changed from the defaults. I'm pretty sure it happens on the first save of the entry, but I can't be sure because it isn't reproducible by any method I've tried. It happens to different users at different times under different circumstances, using different browsers, on different platforms. The only thing that could be consistent is: 1 time or 2 number of entries between episodes. I am starting to track when this happens so I can see if there is a specific time interval or a specific number of entries between episodes, but this is a last resort for figuring this out.
The checkboxes are hidden from the users by default. Most don't know how to turn these back on or even that they exist. This has happened to my partner, who has been using Movable Type for like 4 years. It is not simple user error. It happens to frequently. It seems random, but as Byrne has said to me many times, there's nothing random in software - we just have to find the bug.
So, you have checked mt_entry and can say for certain that entry_allow_comments is set to 1 on all entries?
Of course not on the entries where the comments get turned off - that is the point. This setting is getting changed without the interdiction of humans. The question is how, not if.