

Ask HN/PG: Why are comments being paginated? - 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.<p>Examples: look on the front page with comment threads &#62;~30
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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.

~~~
jedsmith
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.

~~~
flatline
The more link has the rel="nofollow" attribute, so anything but the top
comments will (in theory) not be indexed by search engines either. Given that
some functions of the site are based on karma, I hope it's just a stopgap
measure.

~~~
nostrademons
I believe rel=nofollow only means that the link carries no weight for PageRank
and other signals that may affect the target URLs ranking, not that it won't
be indexed. To block indexing, you need a <meta name=robots content=noindex>
tag on the target page itself.

------
jasonkester
This feature is actually causing damage.

Several times yesterday I found myself opening a seemingly interesting
discussion, reading the comments, then wondering why so few people were
talking about it.

The link that says "Hey, there's actually more discussion that we're hiding.
Click here to see it" is tiny (and unexpected) so I just plain missed it. I
even missed it _on this thread_ until I read a comment talking about other
comments that had scrolled off the 1st page, thus demonstrating that there
must indeed be a 2nd page and that I should look harder for a way to find it.

Had I been able to find (and therefore read) the whole discussion on those
topics yesterday, I might have had interesting things to add. So might all the
other people who missed them for the same reason. I suspect that the overall
quality of discussion has taken a dip since this feature went live.

~~~
bbuffone
This feature makes me want reply to the comment at the top page. Even if my
comment has nothing to do with the parent comment, at least people will read
it.

I don't even hit the "more" button on the homepage to see older stories; there
is no way I am going to hit the more comments.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
The new system can easily be "gamed," as has been discussed already several
times. Here's a specific example. I wanted to observe the irony that PG's
definitive answer is now below the fold, but I wanted my comment to be "above
the fold" so that people could find PG's comment. Realising that if I simply
commented in the appropriate place - as a reply to the original submission, as
I have done with this comment - then my comment would repidly disappear even
further below the fold, I added it as a reply to the unshakeably top reply:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119471>

Thus my comment is technically mis-placed, but guaranteed to be on the first
page of replies and discussion.

There has to be a better solution to the problem of load. It depends on the
cause, of course, but in the absence of profiling information ( _always_ the
first step) I would investigate more cacheing to make the system less dynamic.

ADDED IN EDIT: I _love_ the way this comment has attracted down-votes - I've
been watching it bounce up and down for a bit now. It's clearly alright to
discuss the merits and otherwise, but for some people, clearly not alright to
demonstrate the effect. On a forum for hackers, I find that delightful!

~~~
edanm
You know, this isn't a problem specific to the new system. It's _always_ been
better, karma-gaining wise, to reply to a high-scoring comment, instead of
adding a brand new reply. This just makes that (annoying) behavior even more
impactful.

------
staunch
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!).

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

------
pg
To cut load. I'm not sure it helped much though, so I may not keep it.

~~~
Eliezer
Er, that doesn't seem like a good reason to downgrade the UI of something
important. I don't know how much money it takes to keep HN running, but would
just buying ten times as much computing power really be a significant expense
for YCombinator, compared to the dealflow from HN?

~~~
pg
As far as I know, the current server has close to the fastest processor
available.

~~~
akkartik
RAM might matter more for news.

------
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).

~~~
Jach
I've been using this for some time (though on HN it seems to choke on author-
comment pages, I haven't taken the time to update the rule):
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autopager/>

It's such a better experience on every site when things auto-load as you
scroll down.

~~~
sahaj
chrome version:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebb...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mmgagnmbebdebebbcleklifnobamjonh)

------
redthrowaway
There's a really easy fix to this: Load more comments on scroll-to-bottom. No
button, no bandwidth used, but those who make it to the bottom of a thread
don't have to do anything to see new comments.

I agree with OP; the current system is suboptimal, to say the least.

~~~
flatline
Ugh, I hope this does not happen, I hate the scroll-to-the-bottom-and-get-more
thing. Particularly if the server is under heavy load already, you never know
if there is more or if so how much, and it takes the scrollbar away from your
mouse pointer once it's loaded another chunk due to the relative offset.

~~~
brianpan
I'm confused by your reasons. With scroll for more, you _would_ know if there
is more- the end is the end, just like with pagination. And it's no worse than
pagination in the "you don't know how much more" department, either. The
pagination is a "More" link, it doesn't indicate how much is on the next page.

~~~
regularfry
One would think it would be relatively trivial for "More" to become "256 More"
or similar...

------
forkandwait
I like plain text emails, terminals, emacs, and I really prefer un-paginated
html pages.

~~~
ratsbane
Often I read HN with Lynx. The plain HTML here works much better than the
markup at most other sites, including Reddit.

------
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.

------
nhebb
It's harder to see whether someone has already made the same point that you
want to make, so it could lead to redundant commentary. I often do a quick
keyword search of the page to see if someone has already made a related
comment. With pagination, you can't easily do that.

------
shawndumas
Until it gets reverted (hopefully) -- AutoPagerize [1]

\----

[1]:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/igiofjhpmpihnifd...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/igiofjhpmpihnifddepnpngfjhkfenbp)

~~~
jamesbritt
I'm curious: Why does this plug-in need access to my browsing history?

~~~
johnswamps
It's probably requesting "tabs" permissions. The Chrome security permissions
aren't fine grained enough so often you need to request permission for a lot
more than you actually need. For some reason requesting "tabs" shows a scary
warning about having access to all your history. You'll find that a ton of
extensions need access to your history for this reason, it's actually really
annoying as an extension developer.

~~~
jamesbritt
Cool. Thanks very much.

------
spencerfry
Worst HN feature. Please revert.

------
dimarco
Couldn't people take advantage of this by only commenting on high-karma
comments, regardless of whether or not it's relevant to the parent-comment,
but instead just piggy-backing to stay on the first page?

~~~
simcop2387
That is what happens on slashdot.

------
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.

~~~
gscott
Your more likely to upvote to get comments that you like higher. I typically
do not upvote much but now it seems important.

------
lwhi
I noticed the same, and assumed that it was a measure designed to improve site
performance.

Recently, I've found the HN site has become pretty unresponsive at times - I
imagine limiting the number of comments on each page is going to reduce the
burden on the server.

------
kentosi
There should at least be a feature within our profile settings to disable
this.

------
requinot59
Using Ajax for "load on scroll" may be a solution. Or go the reddit way, don't
paginate but don't load full sub-threads.

------
cousin_it
I don't understand the rationale for this feature.

Here's a better way to reduce load: make commenting not require a reload. Same
for editing comments, deleting them, etc.

------
oomkiller
Of all the features we need on HN, this is not one of them.

------
kmfrk
I just noticed the hilarious(ly atrocious) redundancy this causes: Go to the
[W3C HTML5 logo thread](<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115551>) and see
how many times the "Autobot" joke is made.

I've counted at least four instances. (I'm even a part of one of the branches,
as oblivious as I was to the new system and similar discussions.)

I wonder if this comment will show above or below the fold. Flip a coin, I
guess.

------
cincinnatus
Is there anything around on the HN site architecture? A quickly google didn't
turn up anything specific.

~~~
requinot59
<http://www.arclanguage.org> -> install -> arc3.0.tar/news.arc.

------
wvenable
There is no meaningful information in this comment because nobody is going to
see it anyway.

------
zaphoyd
When did this start? I read almost exclusively through the ihackernews.com
mobile site. I just checked and it does not implement the more button and only
shows the first 40 or so comments. It looks like I have been missing out on
the end comments of popular threads without realizing it. :(

~~~
trotsky
the last few hours

------
solipsist
Everyone should be using AutoPagerize[1] (a Sarari extension) by now, or at
least something similar. It makes your life a lot easier on most websites, one
of which is now HN.

[1] - <http://autopagerize.net/>

------
rflrob
I, for one, tend not to even read comment threads larger than a certain size,
unless I want to see specific reactions to an article. I think jedsmith has it
partially right up above when he says "it's about contributing to the
conversation", but for me it's also about reading conversations that I can
hold in my head. Beyond about 40 comments, I'm not sure I can do this at all.

------
pclark
Yet another reason to use Auto Patch Work -
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/aeolcjbaammbkgai...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/aeolcjbaammbkgaiagooljfdepnjmkfd)

I didn't even notice the pages were paginated thanks to the extension (it auto
appends page 2... page 3... to the bottom of paginated content)

------
tsycho
Ironically, if PG does respond to this, his answer might end up unseen below
the fold :)

------
invisible
I'd rather see a hard limit on the number of top-level threads allowed than a
"More."

------
isomorph
Quoth RiderOfGiraffes 34 minutes ago,

Ironic that PG's definitive reply is now below the fold:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118936>

------
lotusleaf1987
Is the feature really saving that significant of load time? I mean HN is as
minimal as it gets, I'd rather all the comments load and take 3-4 seconds more
than have to manually go through and hit more several times.

~~~
1337p337
As pointed out by pg above, it seems not to. An educated guess (read: wild
speculation on my part) indicates that, due to the ranking algorithm of HN
(versus Twitter's simple sort, where new things show up first and order never
changes) rendering and bandwith time are probably dwarfed by the time required
to load and sort all of the comments on all pages to determine what comments
show up on the first page.

------
klbarry
It might be a good idea for PG to charge a small monthly fee if the issue is
server strength.

~~~
jedsmith
I'd rather they look over the architecture and possible changes to the
codebase instead of resorting to charging the users.

------
ezalor
update: no more the case: see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2121727>

