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Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

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Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#1

Post by roxstar »

Is this a new experiment or is it a new permanent thing to reduce load, I don't think many people are going to be looking at the lower end of the spectrum (clicking more) which may detract from interesting comments and conversations.

Examples: look on the front page with comment threads >~30

Re: Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#2

Post by msbarnett »

I agree, I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold".

I went into the feature request thread to see if anyone had requested the ability to turn this off, but gave up on looking after rapid-fire clicking "More" 25+ times. Content more than a page or two back might as well not exist.

Re: Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#3

Post by zppx »

Let's wait for the official answer, but I also include my take.

Maybe because of the community growth. When I began to hang out around here, 6 months before I created an account I believe, 40 upvotes was a huge amount for a post or a comment.

Today it's common to see posts with more than 100 in the front page and comments receiving 60 or so.

EDIT: The number of comments in each posts also exploded, 20 comments in a thread used to make it very active.

EDIT 2: For clarification.

Re: Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#4

Post by kmfrk »

I didn't even notice that - that's incredibly annoying.

I'd be fine with it, if the More returned the rest of the comments, not the x next comments.

I don't really see the point of this either; it can hardly be that big of a resource hog on either ends.

Re: Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#6

Post by eam »

staunch wrote: post #5

I'd rather the page take 10 minutes to load than have it paginated. I know PG is just trying to implement a quick temporary fix, but this one is so annoying it made me go back to work (gasp!).

Yeah, horrible feature. I get lost where I'm at. I'd love to see it back the way it was please. :)

Re: Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#7

Post by jedsmith »

msbarnett wrote: post #2

I agree, I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold". I went into the feature request thread to see if anyone had requested the ability to turn this off, but gave up on looking after rapid-fire clicking "More" 25+ times. Content more than a page or two back might as well not exist.

The Reddit community actually speaks of this phenomenon in threads addressed to new members ("things you should know about Reddit", etc). They say that once there's several long threads with a lot of upvotes, you're better off not commenting as your comment will most likely languish without any attention whatsoever.

I'd say that's partially due to scrolling, but you're correct - that More button is so non-obvious that I didn't even see it until I read this thread. Those comments below More might as well not even exist.

The most common retort to that viewpoint that I saw was "well, so you won't get karma. Bummer. Your opinion is out there anyway," which is missing the point, I think. It's not about the karma, it's about contributing to the conversation. Now, contributing to the conversation is a competition based on time and popularity.

This change will probably do two things: hide a lot of good comments below page flips, and cause people to quickly comment on stories to fill above the fold.

Re: Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated?

#8

Post by alttab »

It would be interesting to see an auto-extend feature like Facebook does with the timeline. Keep scrolling? We will AJAX load them into the page in batches. That should do ya. No buttons necessary, full comment history the further you go, and you don't show more information than you originally ask for (just a couple of comments).
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