1. It was posted using Chrome on a Windows 10 PC.
I had used the blockquote function to quote someone in my initial reply, and that posted just fine. I then edited that reply to fix a typo, and that’s when all the “gibberish” showed up. (Hopefully that makes sense)
2. I typically refresh the forum (again in Chrome) by going to Forum–>Recent posts (using the top navigation bar.
I’m pretty sure this one is something weird on my end. This site has never posted either the posting time or the number of posts correctly for me.