possible bug: replies table check in?

... I then went to the global checkin (in the joomla backend) , and found another reply 'not checked in'. After I manually checked it in there, I was then able to unpublish and delete the duplicate post in the forum front-end...

I am investigating the issue. I suspect the double click prevention somehow not worked and saved the post again.

? A lot of our users are in their 70s, and maybe prone to triple-clicking...

I checked it and found no issue. The form is correctly checked for duplicates by Joomla form handler when submitting

Joomla.submitbutton('reply.save')

So the issue could be your users clicking on the edit button on the reply and leave the reply edit form without saving. When you edit a reply, it will be locked on your name and you must submit the form to release the lock.

Hmm.. That's interesting! I suspect you are right about users abandoning edits.

I do not see this every day, but probably at least once a week.

So how can we make this more bullet-proof?  Maybe a lock timeout after 10 minutes of no activity?

PS: here's a bug - I am not able to post a "thank you" for your post above...

This is what is designed into Joomla and not CjForum. It's the same behavior you will see even with Joomla articles. As an administrator, you can checkin the records if you wish or the author himself has to do it.