What is CSRF verification and why does that come up regularly when you want to reply to a post, which then fails?
Usually when using back button what I'd typed is still there, but why does this happen in the first place?

Because of scammers and spammers who use automated answering software. This is the only way to weed them out. To make sure you are human.

That’s a very good thing that the forums are kept clear. I don’t mind if there are zillions of likes though; good for self-esteem, haha. I do notice the forum pages tend to get stuck when loading sometimes; that must be for the same anti-fakes reason.

Really weird as I keep having it happen a lot when I want to post. And I do nothing but type and click "post reply".

I remember Tom posting about it not that long ago.

I do think it's a forum thing as like I said, I do nothing out of the ordinary and I don't have it anywhere else but here.

Yes, it is specific to this forum.
I participate at many free forums and M2 is the only place I've ever been where 'failures' are frequent.

It's been happening a lot to me too. I end up losing what I wrote, clicking the back arrow doesn't work. It's frustrating when I write quite a bit, like I just did, and lose all of it.

It would be nice to know if it's just a bug/glitch in the system. I can copy what I write in case it happens again, but I don't always remember to do that.

I don't remember to copy too and you know how much I write.

What sux is when I gather research on a subject and get it all worded just right and bang, forgot to copy before submitting it and its all gone.

I find on days when there are long page load times or other glitches I remember to copy my posts more often.
Its that occassional glitch that gets me.

Something new has cropped up:
In addition to the gateway timeouts and the CSRF verification failures it now reload the submit page after posting a reply.
Opening a recent posts page on a new tab shows no new reply so it seems like the reply didn't post so you submit it again and it repeats everytime, then bam, four or five replies all at once causing double, triple and quadriple replies.

FIX YOUR WEBSITE!

SO MANY time outs and other failures recently.

From a few tests it seems someone added a bandwidth limiter to the server.
Server requests seem to be getting to mingle but not accepted, just hanging in limbo.
Its the reason we are not getting an error for every failed send.
Its averaging by time not requests.
I send mytopics link a request from the recentposts page and it goes thru about one in 8 constant tries.
If I send 1 request every 3 minutes or so, it goes thru on first try.
But, CSRF verification failures & gateway timeouts are still happening erratically.

Considering this is a free site, filled with spam and the pandemic has people on the internet more; plus the fact bandwidth does cost money and a free site has ad-generated revenue, I can see why someone would place a bandwidth limiter on the servers but... Being ad-generated revenue AND a social site, it depends on its popularity to create a server request demand and if people abandon the site because it can't keep up, the site loses money because fewer clicks, less money.

Solution: Invest in bigger/better servers, get an IT crew that knows what they are doing and move the community forums off the profile server database.

That presumes NextC LLC is even concerned with this site's viability.

One things is certain tho, people will not come to Mingle 2 if there are too many problems with the site.
So, you may not be planning to shoot yourself in the foot but you may want to get some bandages.