Comment on Commenting

The recurrent timeout problem in the comments has been dragging on and on, but I'm not sure how much of a problem it is for you, the end user, as opposed to me, the guy who has to endure six timeouts while clearing out Turkish dating service spam. Of course, I can't very well ask people to leave comments about how messed-up the comments are, so I've been forced to resort to something higher-tech:

I'm torn as to whether to use this for Dorky Polls in the future-- the ease of clicking might make people more likely to respond, but half the fun of the Dorky Polls is the random write-in factor...

More like this

In the absence of option

o Incredibly irritating, and only just barely tolerable.

I felt compelled to vote "all part of a shadowy international conspiracy that I will explain in a comment".

Popping over from PZ's blog:

How about "annoying as hell, so I just stopped commenting" And the OpenID login still doesn't work properly. Icky!

On a slightly related issue, why doesn't SciBlogs use a bit of javascript to allow the visitor to load up the new comments on a page, rather than having to reload the entire page? I would have thought that would save bandwidth and processor time, especially on some of PZ's massively commented posts.

By foolfodder (not verified) on 16 Jun 2009 #permalink

All polls should have the "I never click polls" option.

By Lassi Hippeläinen (not verified) on 16 Jun 2009 #permalink

Why not have a useful poll amongst sciencebloggers,like:

Is anyone other than PZ experiencing the timeout issue?

As for SB:

Where is the option that says:

"SB's IT department has been asleep at the wheel for a month and still has no clue what is wrong,therefore Im mightily pissed off"

I'd vote for that.

By Rorschach (not verified) on 17 Jun 2009 #permalink

Is anyone other than PZ experiencing the timeout issue?

I can't speak for the bloggers themselves, but as a commenter I'm seeing this on every blog where I'm a frequent commenter. My guess is that it's an SB server side problem. Even PZ's comment threads rarely draw more than 200 comments or so. Unless the spam problem is a lot worse than what I've seen make it to the comment threads, the server shouldn't be choking like this.

Exacerbated by "remember me" STILL NOT WORKING.

There is a "remember me" feature? I'm not seeing it on this form.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 17 Jun 2009 #permalink

I can't speak for the bloggers themselves, but as a commenter I'm seeing this on every blog where I'm a frequent commenter. My guess is that it's an SB server side problem.

It is. Pretty much any operation that requires a rebuild times out-- it's even more annoying on the back end than it is for commenters.

We've been assured that new servers are on the way, Real Soon Now. Until then, we're kind of limping along.

There is a "remember me" feature? I'm not seeing it on this form.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a "rememebr me" feature, which didn't play well with TypeKey registration (which a few bloggers insisted on). We were told that this was a Movable Type bug that would be fixed in the next version upgrade, but it hasn't been restored. I'll ask for it again, but I doubt it will be a high priority.

The commenting is a bummer, but from the blogger's perspective, it is often even worse ... the responsiveness of the back-end stuff we use in posting, etc. can be very bad, and there are some strange quirks like the occassional post cloning itself.

But, yes, as Chad says, the new servers are in the UPS truck right now on the way to the place the server lives! (or the equivalent thereof).

But do not be shocked if there is another round of short term problems related to the deployment of the system on the new hardware. But it will be very short term, I'm sure.