number of new comments doesn't change on refresh

June 12, 2002 9:46 PM

Ok, dumb question time. No matter how often I refresh the page, the new comments number for this thread seems to stay at six. Now, for a while the last comment on the thread was mine, so I know I've seen them all, and this isn't the first time I've encountered this. Anyone tell me what's up?
posted by Yelling At Nothing to MetaFilter-related at 9:46 PM (10 comments total)

Possible dumb answer, but are you sure that page isn't cached in your browser? In Mozilla you can hit Shift-Refresh to be sure you're not shootin' blanks for reloads. I don't know offhand what you do for IE.

If that's not it, I can tell you exactly what you don't want to hear: It works fine for me.
posted by jaden at 1:02 AM on June 13, 2002

don't know what the shortcut actually is, but i tend to try alt-refresh shift-refresh and ctrl-refresh just to cover my bases when i'm frantic about making a page refresh.

but yeah, it works fine for me as well.
posted by juv3nal at 3:01 AM on June 13, 2002

The "new comments" feature has never worked reliably for me. I've posted here about it a couple of times but gotten no useful feedback. When it gives an accurate count, I'm pleasantly surprised, but I simply don't rely on it, since it is wrong about 80 percent of the time (on various different computers).
posted by rushmc at 8:16 AM on June 13, 2002

Well, thanks anyway. Maybe I'm just in the same boat as rush.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 9:38 AM on June 13, 2002

Actually, I'd say that this thread backed up by this comment from the Big Cheese himself suggest that you're talking about a feature and not a bug. Basically, the new comments counter stays the same unless you leave the page unrefreshed for 20 mins or so. Or something like that.
posted by MUD at 11:02 AM on June 13, 2002

I think I know what you're talking about now. When you initially open MeFi logged in, you see a certain number of "new comments". If you refresh, more comments, in addition to the ones you already see, appear. However, if you close your browser and reopen MeFi, only the new comments since your last refresh appear.

For instance, whenever I log onto MeFi for the first time in a long while, I keep the front page on one browser and open each thread on individual windows. That way, I can specifically read any of the new comments that I missed since my last visit. If I view everything in the same window, the "new comments" counter gets reset, as MUD refers to.

Hope that's helpful.
posted by BlueTrain at 11:54 AM on June 13, 2002

If you refresh, more comments, in addition to the ones you already see, appear.

This is what does not happen for me. Or, rather, not consistently: sometimes it does, more often it does not. True refreshes seem unrelated to how many times I hit reload...or even close and reopen the browser (assuming that we are talking about the new comment count here, and not the comments themselves).
posted by rushmc at 1:00 PM on June 13, 2002

If you refresh, more comments, in addition to the ones you already see, appear.

This is what does not happen for me. Or, rather, not consistently: sometimes it does, more often it does not. True refreshes seem unrelated to how many times I hit reload...or even close and reopen the browser (assuming that we are talking about the new comment count here, and not the comments themselves).
posted by rushmc at 1:00 PM on June 13, 2002

bah, twitchy finger, sorry...
posted by rushmc at 1:01 PM on June 13, 2002

At least we know your refresh button is doing something.
posted by jaden at 4:28 PM on June 13, 2002