New Time-Delayed Action!

August 7, 2011 2:42 AM

Is there something broken with comments? When I hit "post", the page reloads, but my comment doesn't appear for a good 30-60 seconds, and then I have to either reload the page again or hit the Load New Comments button before my comment appears in the thread. This is decidedly not the functionality I'm used to on this website.
posted by hippybear to Bugs at 2:42 AM (56 comments total)

Test
posted by tomswift at 2:48 AM on August 7, 2011

I have no problem here in meta. Worked as it should. (iPad)
posted by tomswift at 2:49 AM on August 7, 2011

Hrm. That's interesting.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 AM on August 7, 2011

And I, too, have no problems here. It's happening specifically in this thread that I've noticed so far.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 AM on August 7, 2011

But.....weird on the blue, as you described. Nothing shows after I hit submit...then the post button is grayed out..but the preview button is available. ...hitting preview, with the now empty text box results in the post then showing as it should...

Ghosts?
posted by tomswift at 2:54 AM on August 7, 2011

And it's not happening in this thread...

So, that's just peculiar.
posted by hippybear at 2:54 AM on August 7, 2011

Ditto, having the problem myself in the London riots thread.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:58 AM on August 7, 2011

It could just be loading time on that monster thread.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:28 AM on August 7, 2011

Hmm, I'm not seeing it, and it has only 137 comments so long loading isn't it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:32 AM on August 7, 2011

Monster thread of under 150 comments? That's not really all THAT monster for MetaFilter, is it?

No, this is behavior I've never seen from MeFi before. I type in a comment, hit "post", the page reloads, and my comment isn't anywhere to be found. I hit the reload button in my browser and it still doesn't appear. On the 3rd or 4th reload, my comment finally appears, or if I sit and wait for the new comment alert box to show up, I can hit "show" and then see my comment.

It's really strange.
posted by hippybear at 3:32 AM on August 7, 2011

I had same problem in that thread. Hit post, comment box I just typed went blank. Comment wasn't posted. Hit reload, my comment still wasn't posted. I thought I lost the comment. Hmm... I figured I'd try going back to see if my comment was preserved in the comment box. It was, and this time, the comment appeared in the thread as it should have. Threw me for a loop. Almost posted twice because of the delay.
posted by 2N2222 at 3:42 AM on August 7, 2011

I am getting this problem too.
posted by Decani at 4:00 AM on August 7, 2011

Security check prior to publishing? A man in the middle ?
posted by infini at 4:08 AM on August 7, 2011

If so, we should ask him to change his ways.
posted by SpiffyRob at 4:09 AM on August 7, 2011 [6 favorites]

Assuming the middle is in a mirror, that is. I should go back to bed.
posted by SpiffyRob at 4:10 AM on August 7, 2011 [4 favorites]

I had the same problem in the same thread.

(I also saw a front page post completely disappear that didn't show up even with my deleted-posts Greasmonkey script, and now I'm seeing it -- as deleted, of course. That was the Zelda post, if it makes a difference.)
posted by taz at 4:33 AM on August 7, 2011

And now that London Riot thread is working fine for me, and it's the Chelsea Hotel thread which is having this odd problem.
posted by hippybear at 4:43 AM on August 7, 2011

And now it's happening in the Riot thread again.

Peculiar. Are you sure that you haven't instituted a manual comment approval system which is delaying the appearance?
posted by hippybear at 4:50 AM on August 7, 2011

This happens a lot while posting from an iPad -- are you using a nonstandard browser? Also, I've noticed the slow-loading thing happening once or twice recently but like mathowie chalked it up to the monster threads I was reading.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:08 AM on August 7, 2011

Same problem here, in the London riots thread. And I'm not posting from an iPad, but rather from a MacBook Pro. Safari.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:16 AM on August 7, 2011

This isn't slow-loading. It's a completely new behavior from the MetaFilter server end which I've never seen before today. My browser is Safari 5.1 running on MacOS 10.6.8.

But none of that matters. This is server-end stuff, not having to do with my system at all. Page loads after hitting "post", comment isn't there. Wait a minute or two, new comment box appears, hit "show", and the comment appears. That's hardly browser-based.
posted by hippybear at 5:23 AM on August 7, 2011

Yup. Just commented now in that thread, and it took 5 count 'em 5 page reloads for the comment to show up. Kah-ray-zay!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:28 AM on August 7, 2011

Or geographic, since its just happened to me too, ancient Dell with MS XP
posted by infini at 5:30 AM on August 7, 2011

And it's happening with all kinds of threads on The Blue now. Just commented in the Fair Trade Coffee thread, and am now waiting for my comment to actually appear.
posted by hippybear at 5:44 AM on August 7, 2011

Matt's wanted to raise signup fees for a while now, while pb opposes this and is very much of the opinion that the only solution is to make cuts on the server-side of things. If they don't work together and find a solution quickly, further downgrades are imminent. In other words, you're fucked, people.
posted by gman at 5:52 AM on August 7, 2011 [5 favorites]

the server-side of things.

Keep on the server side
Always on the server side
Keep on the server side of life
It will help us every day
It will brighten up our way
If we keep on the server side of life
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:58 AM on August 7, 2011 [3 favorites]

I guess our only hope is that they'll come to some kind of bilateral compromise where both server-side cuts and signup fee increases are discussed at length, but then finally the end result is that they only cut the server and then form a committee to discuss possible later fee increases but which likely won't ever happen.

At some point, Google will downgrade MetaFilter's rating, and then we'll see where the chips fall.
posted by hippybear at 6:00 AM on August 7, 2011

This is decidedly not the functionality I'm used to on this website.

I heard petulant foot-stamping when I read this.

(I keed, I keed.)

Also, aren't some of you on PST? what are you all doing up so early?
posted by desjardins at 6:06 AM on August 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

Also, aren't some of you on PST? what are you all doing up so early?

I went to bed at 7:30 (my normal bedtime these days) woke up 2 hours before my 3:30am alarm, never got back to sleep, decided I'd be awake rather than tossing and turning...
posted by hippybear at 6:15 AM on August 7, 2011

It's not us, it's you.

Ok from an iPad in China.
posted by arcticseal at 6:23 AM on August 7, 2011

I haven't tried either one of the threads mentioned, but this is exactly what was happening to me in the Bill Nye thread the other day before pb unleashed his magical powers upon it.
posted by elizardbits at 6:27 AM on August 7, 2011

This thread worked fine. Chrome 13 on XP.
posted by desjardins at 6:37 AM on August 7, 2011

We did make a change on the server last night to help handle extremely long comments. It's possible that something in that change could have disrupted query caching in some cases.

I tweaked a few more things, let me know if you're still experiencing delays seeing new comments.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:40 AM on August 7, 2011

Does it go away if you turn off the automatic updating thingy? I found similar weird things happening when I first turned it on. In my case it ended up slowing down my whole computer to the point I thought it was broken, which I think is some weird incompatability thing because it's not an overly old or slow computer, but turning it off made things work just fine again.

Probably not the case for you guys since you're getting sporadic problems rather than across the whole site. But if will only take a minute to turn it off in your preferences and see if that makes any difference.
posted by shelleycat at 6:42 AM on August 7, 2011

Happened to me in the Chelsea Hotel thread around 12.04am. Troll had multiple comments around 11.03pm that seemed like they may have been caused by something like this. They've since been moderated back to a single comment.
posted by Ahab at 7:43 AM on August 7, 2011

We did make a change on the server last night to help handle extremely long comments.

To explain, people were posting super complicated lots-of-teeny-bits comments in the ASCII art thread and were hitting the limits of what the server could handle which is why pb changed stuff. Let us know if it's still happening.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:48 AM on August 7, 2011

And why can't we post the same comment twice inside a minute? (Just tried it..) Are duplicates automatically deleted or something?
posted by Ahab at 7:49 AM on August 7, 2011

i had to post this comment because it was already here when i entered the thread, and i didnt want to disrupt the space-time continuum...pb, i think you overshot it aa little.
posted by davejay at 7:59 AM on August 7, 2011

There's a dupe checker, yeah. Sometimes it fails but it means if you hit the Post Comment button twice in a row it will only post once.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:01 AM on August 7, 2011 [3 favorites]

I was once duped at the Chelsea hotel, not fun let me tell you.
posted by The Whelk at 8:34 AM on August 7, 2011

I think we need to bring that time delayed action back. And a general comment deleter. I have never been fighty on the webz and just found myself at that tipping point for the first time. I never knew it felt like wanting to throw up, punch the screen and throttle the invisibles all at the same time.

*aargh*
*chainsmokes*
*wanders off to play a soothing death match in AoE*
posted by infini at 8:36 AM on August 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

We did make a change on the server last night to help handle extremely long comments.

Treaty of Westphalia can now fit in a single comment pb?
posted by Meatbomb at 9:36 AM on August 7, 2011

Yep.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:40 AM on August 7, 2011

Can Meatbomb fit in a single comment? I'm willing to jump up on and down on the post button.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:57 AM on August 7, 2011

Note that, as with most such constraints on the site, this is a limit, not a suggestion.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:59 AM on August 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

'k, half a Meatbomb it is.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:06 AM on August 7, 2011

Note that, as with most such constraints on the site, this is a limit, not a suggestion.

That just sounds markovian ( I need to remove the mccarty.tim site from my recent activities, its influencing me...)
posted by infini at 10:57 AM on August 7, 2011

meatbomb, gives a scanner pic!
posted by clavdivs at 12:26 PM on August 7, 2011

I have no idea how these people got their Meatbombs wedged into a single comment, or why?
posted by juv3nal at 12:33 PM on August 7, 2011

Ahab: Happened to me in the Chelsea Hotel thread around 12.04am. Troll had multiple comments around 11.03pm that seemed like they may have been caused by something like this. They've since been moderated back to a single comment.

It was indeed caused by this problem. Flapjax wrote a rhyme about my double, but that too was swept clean by morning. I'm afraid it's the closest I'll ever get to a song, and now it's only a memory...

:'(
posted by troll at 1:58 PM on August 7, 2011 [2 favorites]

I encountered the terrible JRUN yesterday, while trying to leave a comment in the Blue. It was as if thousands of posts had all cried out at once.
posted by flabdablet at 4:54 PM on August 7, 2011

I'm afraid it's the closest I'll ever get to a song, and now it's only a memory...

Aw, man, don't tempt me. The kids just fell asleep. Hmm.
posted by davejay at 9:24 PM on August 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, the odd behavior seems to have stopped... for now. :P

Still not sure what it was or why it was happening, but in that way it simply reminds me people and their cats wedged into scanners.
posted by hippybear at 3:52 PM on August 8, 2011

Good to hear. The problem was caused by some changes we made on the server that were interfering with the way data is cached.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:10 PM on August 8, 2011

The problem was caused by some wedges we made on the scanner that were interfering with the way data is cat-ed.

I'm sorry. I'll go to my room of shame for a while now.
posted by hippybear at 5:25 PM on August 8, 2011

I just posted a comment about bandwidth hogging visitors usually being denied access to many websites especially if advertisers deem they are not relevant to the Onion thread in response to Ubu's comment - was that a delayed reaction (as in should I wait) or was that offensive/out of guidelines in any way?
posted by infini at 9:04 PM on August 8, 2011