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My comments are not registering on My Comments list, anyone else having the same problem?
Please report here with a comment.So Al Shaw is aware of the size and location of the problem. From this reply to me on his thread, he seems not to have gotten many complaints about that.
Mine haven't been updated since the two comments I made soon after the new software was put in and those have the wrong timestamp on them.
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Wow, talk about squeaky wheel getting the grease!
All of a sudden, all of my comments are there.
Thank you to whoever is responsible.
October 14, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm having the same problem.
October 14, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
same problem. (Mac OS, Safari.)
October 14, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Me too - briefly when I first (spend a long time figuring out how to) logged in, I saw them, now, nada.
October 14, 2008 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
One that I made today a couple of hours ago hasn't shown up.
October 14, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my case, I had to log off first, then all my comments appeared when I logged back in
October 14, 2008 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
My comments list went back to being frozen right after I posted the thank you at the top of the thread. October 14 @ 2:36 PM. I can see the comments I made on other people's posts since then (I must have made over 5, over a wide time span, too,) but they are not on my list. It's not being updated.
Just thought I better ad that to continue the narrative somewhat accurately here, since this blog post is still at the top of my blog page/
:-(
October 15, 2008 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
And now that I post on my blog, a bunch more comments appear on my comments list. Is it some magic key to post on one's own blog, that then your comments list will update? Seriously, my comments list was frozen from yesterday afternoon to this evening.
October 15, 2008 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't had any comments show up on my comments since two short initial ones I put up five hours after Al's thread "To Use the EXTENDED tab is a virtue", started at 12:35 pm on 10/13.
October 16, 2008 1:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Update: As of just now, the "comments" and "recommends" features on "myblog" are somehow working. I didn't "do" anything. It just happened. Al Shaw, if this is your doing, thank you, thank you!
October 16, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The system will only accept two links in a comment, no more. So on this post I will be posting several comments in a row in order to list some examples of comments not posting.
I asked Al Shaw about the problem, with example of 7+ hour delay on readytoblowagasket's comments being posted here. That was October 16 @ 6:37 PM. That has not shown up on my comments list as of October 17, 1:51pm.
Tom Wright posted this comment @ October 17, 9:38 AM. It is not on his comments list as of October 17, 1:09pm. His comments list currently stopped at October 16, 4:00 PM.
October 17, 2008 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
More examples of comments missing from lists
hoppycalif2 posted this comment October 16, 7:45 PM. It is not on his comments list as of October 17, 1:30pm; the last comment there is from October 14.
Ellen posted 6 comments on Reed Hundt's "Elections Matter" thread starting here @ October 16, 10:08 PM, going through October 17, 2008 8:21 AM. None of them are on her comments list as of October 17, 1:21 pm. Her comments list currently says it stopped at October 15, 10:58 PM, but it does not have the comment from that thread on it that was posted before that time, nor any of the others after that time.
October 17, 2008 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another example of comments missing from lists
I posted 2 comments on David Seaton's post October 16, 9:43 PM.
I posted 3 comments on barefoot's blog October 16 10:51 PM through 11:50pm.
None of those comments are on my comments list as of October 17, 1:47pm.
October 17, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another example missing from my own list
October 16, 6:51 PM I thanked Tom Wright for a link he put in an October 16, 6:00 PM comment. His comment just now turned up on his list around 2:00 PM October 16, a very long delay. My reply still has not shown up on my list.
To point out some of the problems involved: since this was on another user's blog post that scrolled away quickly, and Tom neither tracks that user nor me, he may never know that I replied to him. I myself forget all about my reply until I saw it on his list. It's beginning to sink in for me that one may be posting without anyone seeing if the site cannot have timely updating of comments lists for people to check if there are replies. This will eventually sink in with other users as well, and what will happen is that they either snipe at a poster they are not "following" and forget about it or not comment at all. The dashboard helps, but because it does not last very long chronologically, it is no subsitute for comments lists to check. Without that, you don't have much reason to comment or reply on unpopular posts that will scroll away quickly. Because you forget where they were and have no comment list to get back to them.
October 17, 2008 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes--important to get this fixed.
Also, pls pardon my "doh" question, but are we "supposed" to be able to find out who others are following and who is following us? (other than by happening to catch a drive-by blip on our dashboard noting someone we are following is following someone else?)
October 17, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
October 17, 2008 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
My bad, very bad: I didn't use the new preview. :-(
American Dreamer, I presume you can figure out that the blockquote is supposed to end with your paragraph.
October 17, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks!
October 17, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another "doh" question: are we supposed to be able to find out who recommended our blog posts?
October 17, 2008 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't found it if there is a way.
BTW, some meta diversion inspired by that question...
that sort of thing is pretty common in other sites with any kind of ratings or recommends. For example, we were able to see who rated comments and what they rated them, as well a list of all user's ratings, when we had Scoop software here way back in the day. On Kos, you can see who rated comments and whether they rated them plus or minus. (I believe the design was with community policing, everyone can then watch for abuse or gaming of the system.)
It's interesting, no site has perfected things along those lines, Kos took Scoop, I believe, and customized it. And one problem is that Kos doesn't have ratings or recommends of blog entries themselves, which means that people don't earn "karma" as a trusted user for a blog entry, which means that people created "tip jars" as comments under a blog as workarounds so that you could give karma for a blog entry. And they created "rescue rangers" to find blogs that needed promotion out of the churn. Now here we've got the popularity contest with rating of blogs that elevates blogs out of the churn, but we also have people doing their own "Rescue Ranger" threads and begging for votes to get them elevated, because they don't think the results of the elevation by voting works out well.
So users do both come up with workarounds of defects of the system and learn to game systems. What bugs me is that it seems like no software developers out there study that as to blog forums and come up with teh user-friendly, like ebay once had to do to grow. If you used ebay back in its early days, you know that the most used pages were users helping other users learn to use the system. And then all kinds of people built websites to make money off of services that ebay's system didn't afford, like photo hosting sites for ebay, or ways to do shipping, or even people charged for doing the listings for you. Then ebay finally figured out (doh!) they should fix what was making it so hard to use, so they would get that business rather than other people....now they've gone too far in the other direction, heh....
October 17, 2008 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
In Re: the two comments max.
There may be a workaround. Can you help me out on a test case?
October 21, 2008 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
"My comments" section lists five consecutive distinct comments as having all been posted at 12:05 am on October 16. I am a pretty fast typist. But not that fast.
The second most recent comment from the top, as I write, was posted about 46 hours prior to the one below it. (October 14, 2:06 pm versus October 16, 12:11 pm)
The "most recent" comment at the top as I write--October 16, 1:49 am--is not the most recent, even among the comments that appear in the "my comments" section now.
I've probably posted 5 or 6 comments since the last one which appears in the "my comments" section, which is dated at what is now about 26 hours ago.
October 17, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, there's still big lags on the comments. And the oddest thing is that it sometimes picks an old one -a couple of days old - to stick at the top of the list, which makes it look like I haven't been commenting since.
So, lags plus mixed up chronology.
October 17, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, starting to appear to me that it's working sort of like google cache? I don't know the correct techie terms for this, but the comment tracking is not immediate, it seems they get picked up spdiers or whatever ya call it, when they scan thread by thread? The dashboard is different, that is built in, it picks up everything immediately, there is an architecture there doing that.
If this is the case, I am surprised that designers did not understand from past users of this site that people very much value knowing about comments immediately. They didn't need or want the features of Facebook, following "friends," so much as they want to be able to track conversations. The "friends" or "buddies" thing, as it is called on other systems is ok, adds a filtering ability. But that was never wanted as much as just being goddam able to have a list of your comments and to know when someone replied to a comment you made. (It's like doh, how many times it has to be said?) In my estimation, second most popular request of this audience after preview or editing was "I want to see my comments, and I would also love to see replies to them." Heck, the last comments list we had, (the measly "last 10" or whatever it was) was put in by popular demand--when they first put in the Movable Type, they didn't have it. I believe comments lists had to be customized in the Drupal software before that, too, also by popular customer demand.
I'll use it, like I have in the past, the best I can, really don't want it to seem like I am complaining too much. Just interesting, in a way, to see needs not being filled by web designers, when an untrained dope like me can see the need crying out to be fed, the opportunity for those who have the skills to do something about it.
October 17, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
My comments section of my blog is fully up to date now. Thank you, Al Shaw or Andrew G or whomever I should be thanking.
What are others in the thread experiencing?
October 17, 2008 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
What are others in the thread experiencing?
I got a bunch too.
Seen plenty of evidence now that they come in glumps like that and have since the software was put in, and that's the way it works. I doubt it's any person doing that.
As I was trying to express in the reply to quinn above, it appears that the code is not written to post every comment immediately and individually to a user's blog as we are used to. Rather, it seems to work something like this: the site is scanned thread by thread, in sections, gathers a bunch of comments from each thread, and then dumps them into comments list all at once. This would explain why it's so erratic, not on a schedule, and why chronology glitches appear. It would stop and dump depending on how full of data it is. This is why people would get their comments updated at different times and why some written after others would show up first, because they were collected from individual blog posts and then sorted afterwards.
All my evidence above was to show that you/I are not alone, this is happening to everyone. Everyone is getting glumps as updates.
I don't know if I am right about why its happening, but if I am, that doesn't bode well for an easy fix, as that means the architecture or set up has not been created to allow for comments to be posted to the lists as they are written.
Andrew Golis has put a comment in clearthinker's blog that says they are "working on it," see his #2 point.
October 17, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Once again, my comments have not been updated for a long time, since
posting on "The Coming Battles" October 17, 2008 7:30 PM
Yesterday I posted several comments on this other thread between 12:40 PM and 4:41 PM.
Those comments are still NOT on the list.
Surfing around, I notice similar time spans for other users, 24 HOURS.
This is very bad for any kind of group interaction or new people getting involved in discussions. You can only "follow" so many on the dashboard before it scrolls away on the dashboard, then you look for what else someone might have been commenting on, and it's not recorded.
The point: to be useful, the comments lists need to have relatively quick updating. Otherwise, they don't do much except serve as an archive. Without frequent updating, the user can't even use them to navigate back to a thread they were on yesterday to check on whether the conversation has continued. I just happened to remember the name of the author, that's how I found the one I was on yesterday.
It's no good for following up on older conversations either, so there's no real bonus for the viewer in the fact that "well, at least older comments on are lists." If you reply to an older comment of a user from their list, they have little chance of seeing the reply unless they happen to both be following you and watching the dashboard at the right time. They might notice that you replied several days later, but you would miss the reply.
The tools are still not working adequately for people to follow discussions. I must say so far it was better before the update for those users who realized could click on a name or put the url of a user page in their browser and actually get recent comments by the user. I see the potential in the new tools, but they are not working well for the goals so far, less than before. The comments lists need to be relatively current, preferably immediate, but if not possible, within the length of the average stay on the site of a user, for the new tools to be an improvement. It only works if you and a follower are both on the site at the same time.
October 19, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The comment I am replying to is time stamped here October 19, 2008 2:47 PM but on my view of your dashboard it is stamped same as your original post, October 14, 2008 2:06 PM.
Just a bit of data for whoever is working on the problem.
BTW, you may notice me following and unfollowing you. It is because you are much more active than me and sometimes I can't find my own comments, etc. unless I unfollow you. I like having a ticker/tracker to follow people but would rather it be only one tab. The other tabs would be more helpful to me if they only included my stuff.
Thanks for letting me use your thread to vent.
October 19, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, don't worry about the following/unfollowing thing. I plan to take people on/off my list, too, if they are commenting too much. If they make a lot of short comments, they fill up the list and it is often easier to track them another way, anyways. Example: I took desidero off my list the other day because she (he?) is one for a lot of short comments, and quinn often comments on her threads, so I could catch most of them that way. I think it is a great tool for following some of the commenters that don't comment a lot but who you like to watch for. Likewise, I think anyone who is putting Josh Marshall on it is really dumb, as basically all they are going to get out of that is a repeat version of the TPM mother ship page.
Matter of fact, I think management is in for a surprise if the tool uses a lot of resources, because once people get used to how it really works, they might be switching from following to unfollowing and back again over and over and very frequently. If they don't fix comments lists, people can use it for a comment tracker that way, by unfollowing everyone but the one commenter they want to see comments for, and then putting others on in the same way.
October 19, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I sent Al Shaw an email this morning, in the unlikely event he is not aware of the continuing problems. I'm again experiencing long lags before my comments appear in the "my comments" section as well as sequencing problems, all as before.
October 20, 2008 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
American Dreamer,
Al responded to my cross-post harangue/whining on his latest thread, last night:
But it's good you emailed, many squeaky wheels will help speed up the fix. I am sure not many are complaining yet simply because they are getting used to the new toys. As I said on Al
s thread, I am equally sure they will all start complaining once they realize (it always went that way in past incarnations.) So the sooner the fix the better.
I should give credit where due and say I am pleasantly surprised at the attention to reader questions and problems--that is something truly new here, in my opinion.
October 20, 2008 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Got this, thanks to my dashboard. Thanks.
October 20, 2008 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just got another "dump" of "my comments" into "my blog". ArtA and others: did you?
October 22, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting because the last few days I have been getting more regular updates, not so much in large glumps, and not as tardy as they used to be, though still not immediate like the dashboard posting seems to be. But I notice that is not the case for everyone. I found yesterday, for example, that bslev's comments had not been updated for like 4 days, when I had "followed" several of his comments past what was posted there.
You might be interested in checking out Pseudocyants' thread on the software. He is an old internet tech guru and long a member here and is sort of reviewing/checking out the new software, and we discussed this problem there yesterday.
October 23, 2008 8:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
My comments and Recommends lists have not been updated on my user profile for four days now. The last one currently on my list is October 21, 2008 2:51 PM.
I made several of them on Reed Hundt's thread starting October 23, 2008 9:14 AM. That's just one I happened to remember being on.
For a short while before the 21st they were being updated a bit more frequently, though still not immmediately.
Until updating of profiles works in a timely manner, makes it impossible to come back and follow a conversation with anyone on any threads but one's own. The chat-room-like quickly scrolling Dashboard function is fun, and will eventually serve as a good way to filter for all users. But it doesn't help track continued discussion. You really need that updating of profiles to go beyond the "hit with a comment and run," and also to go beyond "everyone write their own blog on the same topic and not talk to each other" thing.
(The above is a duplicate of a comment put on Al's Shaw's October 24 "State of the Bugs" post.)
October 25, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Still waiting for the promised fix. Meanwhile, updating my comments while putting these cross-links to related:
Members confirm that user's comments and recommends lists can be updated by posting a new blog or posting a comment on one of one's own old blogs, Nov. 2-6
Tom Wright's Nov. 8 thread: Café Still Not What It Used To Be, (but getting better).
Related meta issues discussed off-topic on a thread by Ticia here.
November 9, 2008 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Post to update my comments & recommends--nothing to see.
November 12, 2008 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Updating my comments; nothing to see.
November 14, 2008 3:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tricked me...I've been caught-up editing some web pages, so I haven't been thinking much about the workings of this site. The project started out to be transcriptions where I desired the ability to cite specific paragraphs, but has since branched out a bit, as I've connected with a grad student who has an interest in Dr. Joseph Priestley. Plus I ran into an apocryphal Jefferson quotation, and have been stalking some of the latest users of it. This one actually rises to the level of personal offensiveness, because Jefferson was never one to believe that the wealthy should not cover extra societal costs.
I'll get back to thinking about the workings of this site soon.
cheers.
November 14, 2008 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Testing to see if commenting on my own blog updates my recommends.
December 2, 2008 4:33 AM | Reply | Permalink