Wots up with the My Comments page only lists the past 7 days?!!?

October 8, 2006 10:56 AM

I was using My Comments to locate a previous post via my comment. Wots up with the My Comments page only lists the past 7 days?!!?

Ok, Maybe I should post more often. Then, I use search, and using my user ID I get nada. Then I used google site search with time limit of 3 months and I get posts from 2004. Oddly, this Google results page is missing the "sort by date/relevance". Same for Yahoo; no date on results sort.

Regardless, this leads me back to a simpler question. Why does the My Comments page limit the results to 7 days? Now I can't rememebr what the post was to begin with, but I would like to hear why the forced limit on this page.

-Long Time Lurker
posted by xtian to Bugs at 10:56 AM (9 comments total)

The limit of the My Comments depth is, I think, to reduce the impact on the server.

If you want to find an older post in which you commented, go to your profile page (click your username at the foot of your comment, or follow links at the top and bottom of the page), and click on the number for comment here:

"Posting History:
MetaFilter: 2 posts by xtian posts and 101 comments"

That'll take you to a page (or pages) of links to your comments, by post—you can quickly locate the post in question.
posted by cortex at 10:59 AM on October 8, 2006

Instead of My Comments, I'd highly recommend using co.mments.com to keep track of threads. It has no limit on time, and it automatically bumps threads with new comments to the top of the list. Plus, if you have an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all the threads you are watching, and whenever someone makes a new comment, that thread will bump to the top of the reader and indicate that there are unread comments in the thread. Damn, damn useful.
posted by Bugbread at 11:49 AM on October 8, 2006

I was also suprised to find how poorly Google searches work on Ask Metafilter. It has never found any of the AskMe comments I've searched for, up to 6 months old, even after I've found the comment and pasted parts of it into the Google search field. Zip. Nada.
posted by Dunwitty at 3:13 PM on October 8, 2006

In fact, I just did a quick comparison tests. I went to random MeTa threads and copied exact bits of comments, in quotes, into Google search, starting with 3 day old threads. Google search "found" all of them.

I did the same thing with AskMe comments, starting 3 days ago, and going back to 6 days ago. Google search didn't find any of them.

I suspect Google Search isn't searching the AskMe comments... Matthowie?
posted by Dunwitty at 3:27 PM on October 8, 2006

You can use a couple of features already built in for just this purpose. If you have commented in the thread, you can sort the front page by your comments using the drop-down list on the right of the page, just above the sidebar. If you (rightly) think that commenting in a thread just to mark a place is A Bad Thing, you can mark as many threads and/or comments as you like using the favourites option (click on the [+] beside the comment date/time stamp or the [+ add to favorites] beside a thread date/time stamp.

Really, as part of the 14k masterclass, you should know better ;-)
posted by dg at 4:12 PM on October 8, 2006

This is the link you are looking for:
http://www.metafilter.com/search_comments.cfm?user_ID=14881
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:52 PM on October 8, 2006

I wish there was a way to permanently ignore threads from My Comments, so that one-line snarks don't result in dull threads hanging around forever.
posted by bonaldi at 4:42 AM on October 9, 2006

Well, you could always make a mild comment to at least flush the thread ou—

Ohhhh, I see what you did there.
posted by cortex at 6:41 AM on October 9, 2006

I was just about to post this exact MetaTalk.. After trying to explain the stated functioning of My Comments (several times, actually), and after a away for two week absence, imagine my surprise when I learned that in practice it is completely different!

I think this needs to be addressed.. :)
posted by Chuckles at 3:49 PM on October 12, 2006