Comment count reconfiguration

March 10, 2004 11:57 AM

Intentional Double Post! Since User No. 1 never responded when I posted this last July... These days, with our lengthy yet interesting (to me) threads I am more often encountering the timeout/comment count refresh issue and would like to again call for this value to be user configured or set to a longer value, preferably 45 minutes or so.
posted by billsaysthis to feature requests at 11:57 AM (15 comments total)

billsaysthisagain
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 1:17 PM on March 10, 2004

If you use your back/forward buttons to go between the main page and the threads rather than re-loading the page, the comment count stays static until you refresh. Or so it seems to me, anyway.
posted by dg at 1:55 PM on March 10, 2004

dg, I respectfully disagree, as I do use the back button. I am no speed reader and these threads that sprout 50+ links before I see them (plus interesting links to be read) and I often get my comment time reset. Which is why I am repeating the request.
posted by billsaysthis at 2:12 PM on March 10, 2004

Sorry, I can't do it, it's a resource hog.

I'd suggest doing what I do, use a browser like Firefox and the tab feature. When you open MeFi, you just open every thread you think looks interesting into a new tab. Then you can read those at your leisure, and reload the home page later when you've read all the threads.
posted by mathowie at 2:26 PM on March 10, 2004

I'd suggest doing what I do, use a browser like Firefox and the tab feature. When you open MeFi, you just open every thread you think looks interesting into a new tab. Then you can read those at your leisure, and reload the home page later when you've read all the threads.

Yes, or you can also just open a whole bunch of new windows if you use IE and group them on the taskbar. Messier, but it essentially achieves the same thing if you don't want to switch browsers.
posted by The God Complex at 2:34 PM on March 10, 2004

Matt, could you please reduce the comment timeout, as I spend all day reading Metafilter and get frustrated hitting refresh all the time and not seeing the system take account of everything I've already read. :)

Actually, I'm not sure why it should refresh the count at all during a single visit (it says "posted since last visit" not "since last refreshed"). As a visit could theoretically be a few seconds or several hours (days, weeks) long, it would make more sense from a resource perspective to treat a browser session as a single visit, and only update the "read" count on a completely new session.

I'm not asking for this though, I think it's fine as it is.
posted by cbrody at 2:52 PM on March 10, 2004

cbrody, there's no way for the server to tell the difference between "last refreshed" and "last visited" other than assuming that a new page request within a time-out period of time is part of the same session.
posted by timeistight at 3:28 PM on March 10, 2004

Sorry, I can't do it, it's a resource hog.

Matt, not to be a pain but how would making the current timeout value longer be a resource hog? I do understand how making it user-configurable would.
posted by billsaysthis at 5:39 PM on March 10, 2004

how would making the current timeout value longer be a resource hog?

The way it works is by giving every member their own session variable, which takes up a bit of memory. Every time you rehit the site, it checks to see if it already has a session for you. After 20 minutes of not hitting the site, the session variable is killed, releasing the spot in memory.

Making the time 30 or 40 or 60 minutes would mean a lot more users hogging a lot more memory variables, as well as people complaining that the site never updates fast enough, if they visit more than once per hour.
posted by mathowie at 5:54 PM on March 10, 2004

So limit the number of session variables available. To something around 17000, maybe?
posted by inpHilltr8r at 7:23 PM on March 10, 2004

Yes, or you can also just open a whole bunch of new windows if you use IE

Or, if you're married to IE, you can use MyIE2 (my long-time fave) which is an extremely (to the point of shovelware, almost, but still lightweight and fast) tabbed/popup stopping/proxy switching/skinnable/plugin-friendly/rock'n'roll wrapper for the IE renderer.

Special bonus - the latest versions allow you to switch to the Mozilla renderer instead. Highly recommended, if you just can't seem to get to like the Moz/FireGoat interface. I've used it for a couple of years now, I think.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:03 PM on March 10, 2004

...extremely feature-rich, I was trying to say.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:22 PM on March 10, 2004

dg, I respectfully disagree, as I do use the back button.
Strange, works for me (in Firefox anyway).
posted by dg at 9:16 PM on March 10, 2004

Hey, thanks Stav. I think I'll check that out (I'm a creature of habit, too, and switching interfaces for my browser is often more trouble than it's worth).
posted by The God Complex at 9:37 PM on March 10, 2004

Why would anyone not want to switch to Opera?

I just don't understand.

(/truebeliever)
posted by kaibutsu at 8:09 AM on March 11, 2004