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  1. Russ
  2. Site Technical Issue
  3. Friday, 01 May 2015
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Dearest Alice ...

I realise I've had a complaint or two against my name in recent hours, and may yet be asked (or even told) to spend time in the naughty corner, but I do have a genuine question regarding the site and it's formatting of the comments section for articles.

Is there, by an chance, an option that can be set, to allow all comments to load at once?

Going through a recent article, I had to click the "load more" button once or twice to view all the comments. I started replying to one comment in particular, but scrolled back up to reference another post someone else had made. I then scrolled back down, only to find my reply-box had disappeared, and I once again had to hit the "load more" button a few times to get back to where I was - with my intended reply, completely gone.

Not to over step my bounds - I realise I'm already on thin ice with some members - but the formatting of the comments section is my only gripe about this place. The "load more" button is a pain in the persqueeter. Is there any way around it?

Thanks for your time.
~ Me
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Alice
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A great question actually! That has been my biggest frustration with finding an exceptional commenting system. Nothing puts a heavier and more disastrous load on our system than the comments. The system we have now was not designed to handle hundreds of comments, with many of them being posted within minutes of each other.

I can either set it up to load the comments in increments for everyone, or load all comments for everyone. Sadly, there's no option for individuals. If I load all the comments though, the server will crash pretty easily. You can load the most recent comments first if that helps, but that does get confusing if you want to reference back to an older comment.

I loaded this discussion page with hopes that it could handle the heavy loads that the commenting system struggles with. My big test case happened recently with my open message thread. We had a few thousand hits in an hour not to mention a flurry of comments and the stress on the server was minimal. The discussion page held up performance wise too. This program was meant to handle volumes of posts. I'm considering as a solution opening up threads for each new episode here and ask that all the heavy discussions happen on this page. That way, there will be a larger flexibility in loading all comments. I'm still trying to work out all the kinks of this page first though (like you can't edit comments or give your proper name for a post, only replies).
  1. more than a month ago
  2. Site Technical Issue
  3. # 1
Russ
WFB Member
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Thanks for the reply, Alice.

I had actually been thinking this forum may have been a more favourable alternative to the comments section. Rather than the comments for an article, simply have a link at the bottom to the same post on this forum. The best thing about these forums is the lineal placement of replies, and the "quote" option can alleviate a lot of the confusion as to who's replying to what in dashing moments of passionate conversation.

With the comments section, as it currently works, it's very difficult to keep track of what's actually newly posted. Clicking the "Sort by Latest first" will sort the comments by date/time that are a direct reply to the main article, but it doesn't factor in the replies to those replies, subsequently making each initial comment a kind of sub-thread of its own. Again making quite a chore of finding what posts are actually new, with any refresh bringing back the "Load More" dilemma.

Very easy to loose one's place.

Anyway ... hope this doesn't come off as me unnecessarily begrudging a good thing. I know I can get animated at times.

Oh yeah ... regarding my earlier remark about losing my unfinished "comment".
I started replying to one comment in particular, but scrolled back up to reference another post someone else had made. I then scrolled back down, only to find my reply-box had disappeared, and I once again had to hit the "load more" button a few times to get back to where I was - with my intended reply, completely gone


Anyhoo, I never bothered retyping the reply, as I couldn't find the comment I was replying to (which prompted me to come here and start this discussion). I then proceeded to scroll through the comments and read others comments. When I found something else I wanted to reply to, I clicked the reply arrow thing, and low & behold, the original message I had typed and thought I lost, was all there, ready and waiting to go. :o LOL
  1. more than a month ago
  2. Site Technical Issue
  3. # 2
Alice
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Yeah, I have tons of frustration finding comments in those large threads. I can't find it often times in the front or back end! I know the comment exists because I get all the emails as soon as they are created and no one is allowed to delete comments. It's gotten so bad, I've had to go to the database and look and edit comments via SQL queries!

I think I'll experiment with using this page soon, by the finale. That way, when we get a flurry of posts over the finale, we won't have these problems. The only thing I want to solve on this page is making sure people have to give their name on posts. "Guest" sounds horribly confusing and I don't want to force people to login. Hopefully I can find a solution to that soon.
  1. more than a month ago
  2. Site Technical Issue
  3. # 3
eilf
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Hi Alice, Twice in the past couple of weeks when highlighting the browser window with the page that WFB is on I have accidentally hit the 'Report' button on some random post. I am not doing it on purpose I swear, and it is sort of unlucky where the mouse-click lands. Is there any way you can add an 'are you sure?' to the report button? It could save you work checking up why I (and I assume this must happen to other people too?) am reporting myself and/or the author of the article! (Sorry elle2!)
  1. more than a month ago
  2. Site Technical Issue
  3. # 4
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