# Posts being made as HTML comments by default?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [December 15, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403 "2020-12-15T20:20:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![teward](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/teward/32/148702_2.png) [@teward](https://meta.discourse.org/u/teward)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403/1 "2020-12-15T20:20:34Z")

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An instance of Discourse I admin has had a complaint that multiple posts are being posted by default as HTML comments such as:

```
<!--

This is the actual content of a post.
-->

```

However, there are no special plugins enabled other than the [`retort` plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retort-a-reaction-style-plugin-for-discourse/35903) and the [`discourse-solved` plugin](https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved) which could do this.

We’re on the latest update as of today, has anyone ever seen this happen on a dockerized instance?

---

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### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2020, 8:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403/2 "2020-12-15T20:25:50Z")

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Do these lines start with 4 spaces? Can you link to a post?

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![teward](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/teward/32/148702_2.png) [@teward](https://meta.discourse.org/u/teward)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2020, 8:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403/3 "2020-12-15T20:29:46Z")

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Nope, I figured out the problem. The core problem was some categories have a template created with an HTML comment block in them.

And the users are not told to post outside the comment block, and simply remove the “Please read the guidelines” content between the comment lines and write their ipost in there.

So it’s entirely a combination of **User Error** and **Staff Doing A Stupid**

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### Author: ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2020, 6:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403/4 "2020-12-17T06:45:34Z")

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> [@teward](#):
>
> So it’s entirely a combination of **User Error** and **Staff Doing A Stupid**

That is a powerful combo 🤣

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### Author: ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2021, 6:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posts-being-made-as-html-comments-by-default/173403/5 "2021-01-16T06:45:41Z")

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