How many links or questions are on the front page?

November 8, 2010 2:13 PM

Is there a set number of links/questions on the front page of Metafilter and AskMetafilter?

Sometimes I don't visit the site for a few days, and I come back and see something like "194 questions and 2920 answers posted since your last visit". Is there a way I can know exactly how many pages to go back so that I hit all the new stuff?

Sorry if this is not appropriate for MeTa, but I thought the answer might be useful to others as well.

posted by kingjoeshmoe to MetaFilter-Related at 2:13 PM (16 comments total)

Looks like it's 50 and 40.
posted by kmz at 2:18 PM on November 8, 2010

Somehow I feel like this used to be something you could set and now I'm coming up completely blank. Looks like 50-ish posts on the main page of MeFi and 40-ish on the front page of Ask right now.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:20 PM on November 8, 2010

Thanks. I think the discrepancy between the two sites is why I could never figure it out myself.
posted by kingjoeshmoe at 2:25 PM on November 8, 2010

Somehow I feel like this used to be something you could set and now I'm coming up completely blank

If you set it to a negative numbers you see posts from the future, before they're made.
posted by fuq at 2:25 PM on November 8, 2010 [8 favorites]

Knowing 2: Metafilter Boogaloo!
posted by kmz at 2:28 PM on November 8, 2010

"Is there a way I can know exactly how many pages to go back so that I hit all the new stuff?"

You can use RSS with a client such as Google Reader to subscribe to any of the subsites and even to threads. While you're at it subscribe to the best feed in the 'verse
posted by Manjusri at 2:33 PM on November 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Snarkin' 2: Askme Bugaboo

Spooky Noise 2: Playin' Didgeridoo

Zoinks 2: Scaring Scooby-Doo

I got nothin.
posted by quin at 2:39 PM on November 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think we may have yanked the user-configurable aspect at one point in favor of a much more resource-optimized caching solution or something.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:14 PM on November 8, 2010

Is there a way I can know exactly how many pages to go back so that I hit all the new stuff?

Since the site has to keep track of the date of your last visit anyway, to count how many new posts and comments have been added since then, I'm wondering... could the new posts be visually distinguished somehow? We have that nice features that tells you how many comments in each post are new, but not one that tells you the post itself is new.

Unless I've just missed that feature, of course, which is quite possible.
posted by FishBike at 4:12 PM on November 8, 2010

I've never worked out how to get that counter thing to work anyway. The browser is a lie.
posted by shinybaum at 4:15 PM on November 8, 2010

If the Count is wrong, I don't want to be right.
posted by bonehead at 4:44 PM on November 8, 2010

Somehow I feel like this used to be something you could set and now I'm coming up completely blank.
Over 5 years ago (with quonsar in fine form).
posted by unliteral at 5:00 PM on November 8, 2010

With the AutoPagerize extension, you'll never need to know. And you'll never get around to walking away from the computer and doing, you know, those things that need to get done.
posted by halogen at 6:32 PM on November 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

"Sometimes I don't visit the site for a few days..."

Huh?
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:10 PM on November 8, 2010 [4 favorites]

If the Count is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Oh my goodness, bonehead!!!

For those of you who are work, you may prefer to watch the censored version.
posted by Deathalicious at 2:04 AM on November 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've never worked out how to get that counter thing to work anyway. The browser is a lie.

pb said that this is because it's too resource intensive to track exactly where you are in each thread so it stores a best guess about when you last accessed the site as a whole in the cookie and counts how many posts/comments there have been since then. Perhaps the MeFi Scroll Tag Greasemonkey script might help.
posted by Electric Dragon at 2:06 AM on November 9, 2010