Experience

happened to me too a lot. I'm now more prudent, editing longer texts in an external editor and than pasting it into the form.

Possible remedies: Longer session timeouts (default on Hop is half an hour, although it sometimes feels more like 10 minutes to me), or encoding some kind of credentials (like a secure hash of the username/password) into the post formular. But that doesn't really cut it, and it compromises security (imagine you leave a post form open in a browser).

So the real solution would be: If an anomymous user tries to post a story for which authentication is required, tell him his session probably timed out and he has to log in again. While doing this, take the posting along in hidden form fields. As soon as the user is logged in, post the story.

Now I know this is hard and takes incredible inner strength, but would you mind re-writing the third bubble piece? It does have a pro side, because texts usually get better the second time around (just like software). (Refactor we must.)

...after lines and pages of lost text in authoring & webmail systems, i always copy the text to the clipboard before submitting it.

(me, I'm always the one for a quick workaround)

Sowas will ich auch!