favorites in the machine

September 22, 2008 3:23 PM

Favorites bug-report?

When someone posts something that ends up getting deleted, as far as I can tell, their "favorites count" (total, the one on their user page) still counts the favorites related to that deleted item. I'm not positive that this is true for posts (I don't know how to tell, other than finding an example like the following), but I know it's true for comments.

Example: I recently posted the following comment to this thread:

Guess where I am right now.

It got a few favorites but apparently a mod thought it was more of a wisecrack than it was a legitimate answer to the question, so it got zapped. I was on my user page prior to making the comment and I know for a fact that my favorites count total went up and now still includes however many favorites that comment got. E.g. - the total didn't change, therefore I have some kind of "ghost favorites."

A) Is this a feature, not a bug?
B) Is there any way to see these ghost favorites, at least for posts, if not comments, for a given user?
C) If I favorite a comment that is then deleted, does that disappear from my favorites total count?

I know TPS already won the popularity contest and all of that, it just seems like favorite counts could be remarkably erroneous based on this.

posted by allkindsoftime to Bugs at 3:23 PM (18 comments total)

This is a known bug. We should probably fix it because of the meatware bug of pointing it out after one has a joke they were particularly fond of deleted from AskMe. Thanks for reposting your deleted joke though.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:25 PM on September 22, 2008

You're welcome :)
posted by allkindsoftime at 3:30 PM on September 22, 2008

Also, TPS totes cheated.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:39 PM on September 22, 2008

"Cheated" may be a bit harsh. "Creatively misrepresentative," maybe.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:19 PM on September 22, 2008

wevs
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:23 PM on September 22, 2008

tl;dr
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:26 PM on September 22, 2008

\D:_
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:01 PM on September 22, 2008

cortex is mad jealous.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:41 PM on September 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth, I thought that joke was awesome. I now regret not favoriting it, and contributing to your ghost favorite total.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 6:48 PM on September 22, 2008

pffft, bet I beat you to 10k
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:10 PM on September 22, 2008

panderers, th' lot of ye.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:23 PM on September 22, 2008

Good luck with that.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:38 PM on September 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

Favorite counts are reset every night at 1:05 AM Pacific. We have a batch job that runs at the time and removes favorites on deleted comments. So you won't see a miscount more than 24 hours or so.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:23 PM on September 22, 2008

Fedora-based favorites do not count, madam.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:52 PM on September 22, 2008

And yet, there they are.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:28 PM on September 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

Favorite bug report.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:30 AM on September 23, 2008

FWIW, I think it was an excellent answer to the question. The question (arguably chatfilter) boiled down to "What do you do while shitting?" While allkindsoftime was a bit clever about it, he provided just as much information as many other contributors to the thread.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:11 AM on September 23, 2008

meatware bug: a very needed new MetaTalk category (or a new Shyamalan film).
posted by bru at 6:15 AM on September 23, 2008