It's a problem with the header on the forums. It's not being compiled or displayed properly. Everything in the header is just being dumped onto the page instead of hidden away until called for as it should be. All of the drop downs are being displayed instead of being hidden. Once you get to the forums, the forums are working fine. You just have to fight your way through all of the rest to get there.
Compilation/syntax errors are not uncommon, and since the header works fine on QVC.com, this should be fixable. It's only when you go to community.qvc.com that you run into the issue. They're just dumping the full contents of the header out all at once and it makes a mess. I'm assuming they use different servers for the forums and the shopping site, for if I tap on one of the exposed drop-down items in the exposed header, the header is fine again on the shopping side. Until I go back to the forums at which point the header is screwy again.
Part of the issue is likely a fight between the server owners/operators and the QVC IT team as to who's responsible and who should fix the issue. It's interesting that my tablet had been unaffected until yesterday. My Chromebook and desktop are still unaffected. The header works fine on both of them but not on the tablet despite working fine on the tablet also until yesterday.
It's an interesting issue. Why is it spreading? Why doesn't it affect everyone? What's the tipping point? I've read of several people who have had issues with old devices they seldom use, so it's not likely a compounding issue where it affects those on the forums most. And no one seems to get better. Once you've got the problem, you've got it.
Things like drop-downs and headers are often loaded with JavaScript or HTML. (Typically, HTML5 these days.) I'm thinking that maybe the issue changes the HTML or Javascript reader on the user's devices in some manner? How? I don't know. Why does it do it seemingly randomly? I don't know. It would be intriguing to know if a fresh install of an affected OS fixed the issue by restoring the JavaScript/HTML readers to a factory state.
It's an interesting issue to experience. At the very least the IT team should be able to delete the header temporarily from the forum server until they have a fix. The higher-ups at QVC wouldn't be thrilled about that, but it would restore a more normal function to the forum users. Just kill the header until there's a fix (either on the server side or the Q side.) The header is the problem so deleting it for the short term makes the most sense. Once fixed, plug it back in. In the old BASIC programming language (the last programming language I was reasonably fluent in), you'd just insert a GOTO command in front of the header loading and go to the part of the program after the header loaded. It would be an easy way to bypass the trouble. I would assume it would be possible to do something similar these days without a lot of trouble.
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