Update 2025-07-21: Post editing and most other causes of the 403 errors should be resolved now. If you are still seeing errors, please share details here so we (MattMD
doing all the heavy lifting here - huge thanks) can help track them down. Thank you!
Hey all, many of you have noticed and brought it to the mod team's attention in the last few weeks that you are experiencing 403 Forbidden errors when making new posts or editing existing posts. I've been responding to folks as it has come up, but obviously it is affecting enough people that a post is warranted.
The (small, but diligently working) dev team is aware of the 403 error situation, and is working on diagnosing exactly what is causing it. In the meantime, unfortunately, we will need to use workarounds or simply work within the confines of the current state of things. Apologies in advance for all of the headaches that this causes.
Cause: For some reason, posts that exceed a character limit are not allowing preview or post actions to process correctly, causing the 403 Error to appear. This character limit is small enough that it causes significant issues creating an IC or GB thread in particular.
Workaround: It's not easy, and it is no better than the obvious. Posts will need to be split into multiple smaller segments in order to accommodate the character limits. For GB threads, since those all require approval in the first place, please feel free to "Reserve" multiple posts after the OP, even if you are not currently using those posts as part of the existing GB thread content. There will be no trouble getting a few responses in before anyone else can.
Resolution: As stated earlier, the root cause and therefore solution to the problem is not known exactly at this time. The dev team is working on it, but it will require some time before these 403 errors are completely resolved. I will update here as more information is available and/or the errors are completely resolved.
