Another minor usability gripe...

I've noticed that things don't seem to work as I'd expect when a thread extends onto a second page. For instance, links from the tracker don't link to the correct page. Instead it generates a link to a non-existent target in the first page, so I manually have to scroll down and go to the next page. Then, when I get there, there are no more red stars: it thinks I've already read all the comments. There may be other things, too, but those are the ones that impact me personally.

By the way, from the URLs it looks like comments-per-page is configurable, but I haven't seen a (non-URL editing) way to change that setting... Anyone?

Finally, my opinion: I'd prefer not to have threads paged at all. It's a rare thread around here that goes past 50 replies, and I'd much rather see them all on one page. Obviously if this is configurable on a per-user basis, please point me to it and I'll change my settings.

Thanks, and sorry once again for complaining. The new site really is light years ahead of the old one.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

It is configurable on a per-user basis

At the top of each list of comments.

Wow...

How could I have missed it? *shrug*

In any case, since 90 is the max there, that only seems to postpone the problem...

Default now set to 90

Because of the navigation bug you reported , I've changed the default number of posts per page to 90 (hope that doesn't mess up anyone's preferences). That can still be overridden if anyone wants shorter pages.

Postponing the problem is a good thing from my perspective, since there are a bunch of other things that we want to do, and things like this are really Drupal issues which might be addressed in future versions anyway.

Comments per page

Since I noticed that the "Why type systems are interesting" post has reached 86 comments, I went ahead and added some bigger numbers to the list of choices for "comments per page", and I've upped the default number of comments per page to 200. Go for it, guys! ;)

BTW, if you've ever changed the "Comment Viewing Options" which appear below top-level posts, and saved those settings, then this change may not take effect for you - if so, you'll need to change the setting for yourself, if you choose to.

Comments

if you've ever changed the "Comment Viewing Options" which appear below top-level posts, and saved those settings, then this change may not take effect for you - if so, you'll need to change the setting for yourself, if you choose to.
---------------------
[online gambling spam sig edited out -- Anton]

Looks like spam?

Signature spam, hidden under a randomly generated post?
I strongly suspect online gambling has nothing to do with Programming Language Theory.


--Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com

Reasonably impressive autogen

Reasonably impressive autogeneration of the comment, though.

Indeed, if this is really aut

Indeed, if this is really autogenerated.

I am starting to think we need to work on spam control..

Either you've had it *really* easy so far

Or you've been deleting a shedload of stuff much faster than I've been hitting refresh on the tracker...

Maybe Drupal isn't so widespread, and so until now has mostly escaped spammers' attention?

Many robots are deterred by a single, simple change to the submission form - provided that your site is the only one in the world that implements this change (if lots of people did, they'd have a motivation to recognize and work around it). Spammers don't seem to be customizing their robots to deal with the idiosyncrasies of each site just yet.

No anonymous posts

We don't allow anonymous posts, so you first have to sign up for an account. It seems only quite recently that spammers have started signing up for accounts, since they used to be able to get away with posting anonymously on many blogs.

We used the single-change-to-the-signup-form approach on the Scheme Cookbook, with good results so far. I'll try that here when I get a chance, or if spam gets worse, whichever comes first. (No betting please ;)

Actually...

Actually, it's not that impressive... It's just copied from the second paragraph of Anton's original post. Clever trick, though...