What algorithm or parameters decides, in questions or answers with a large number of comments, which comments are immediately visible (right below main text) and which are hidden under add / show X more comments link?  I assumed, that all comments are ordered by the date, they were made and the most recent one are visible at once, while the oldest one are hidden under above mentioned links. Turns out, I'm wrong.  In comments-queues, that look more like chat or question-answer stream (against SE rules, but even though existing) it is often, that parts of such stream are hidden and parts are show. Which makes such "chat" sometimes unreadable or even without any sense. When add / show X more comments link is clicked, you can clearly see (in this chat-like situations), that some comments are added in between others and only then, all of them together, formulate a readable "discussion".  For (too) many times I've run into situation, that upon displaying a page and looking at comments seen directly I got the feeling like "what are those guys talking about". And only after revealing all comments, this chat-like discussion was readable. Before that, it often happened that only a serie of comments-questions were displayed, while all or most of comments-answers were hidden, making a total mess.  This really intrigues me, so I would like to now:   Why such behavior is introduced? What is the reason or purpose for starting with "mess"? What is the algorithm for picking which comments are shown and which are hidden? Why comments are not ordered by date with newest shown and oldest hidden?
35239
I'm curious how it is decided how many comments to display before the "Show more comments" link. Sometimes I see a dozen comments on a question and no "Show more comments" link, in other occasions no comments are visible at all, only the link.
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The  was once introduced because it became hard &quot;to keep track of all your questions, answers, and comments across every site you participated on&quot;.   The small red number tells you how many new replies you have across the entire Stack Exchange network of websites. And by replies, I mean:  New answers to your questions New comments on your posts @replies to you in comments   However, it's been a while since 2010, and there are many more events triggering an inbox notification.
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Yesterday I upvoted a comment that had interesting links. I didn't do any other activity in that question apart from giving my upvote to that comment because it had some links I wanted to check later.  Now a day has passed and I want to view that comment to bookmark those links, but I can't see any way on Stack Overflow to see comments that I've upvoted. Can I see these votes? If not, why is this feature missing?
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Moderators can move comments to a chat room associated with the post, and now we don't even have to wait for 20 comments to be posted in a short period of time -- we can do this at any time .  This is great; it gives people a place to have that tangential discussion that might be valuable but isn't about the post any more and doesn't belong on the main site.  Here's the problem: we move comments to chat, which leaves an auto-generated comment saying "comments have been moved to chat (link)".  And then some people continue the discussion in chat but other people .  Sometimes there are so many new comments that the "moved to chat" comment gets buried so people don't even notice.  (I've had several cases where dozens of new comments came in after a move to chat.)  When more (non-clarification-seeking) comments appear after a chat migration, our choices are:   delete the comments (failure to follow directions), but users think this is mean and it's also tedious to do (have to either delete them individually or purge and then dig through the big pile to undelete the "moved to chat" comment buried in the middle) leave it alone, but then we're being inconsistent (why did those have to move but not these?) and thus inviting the unwanted behavior hand-copy them into the chat room, which is a lot to ask of moderators, especially to serve people who didn't take the initial hint (translation: no we are not going to do that)   The "move comments to chat" feature is single-use; once it's been used on a post it's grayed out on the menu, presumably because bad things would happen if it tried to create the same chat room a second time.  Would it be possible for that option to remain (optionally renamed "add comments to chat" if you think that's valuable), with later invocations adding new comments to the existing room?  It could find the comment with the link to the room (which might or might not be the earliest comment on the post), and then send everything after that comment to the existing room.  (It wouldn't need to generate a new auto-comment, but it would need to make sure those users can chat in that room, same as the current behavior.)  One might ask why we shouldn't instead just shut down comments after a move to chat -- once there's a chat room, force everything there and take away the "add comment" link.  Attractive as that idea is to me, it also prevents the (few) comments that are actually what comments are for -- requests for clarification.  If we can come up with a practical way to add some friction for post-migration comments that'd be cool, but we're always going to end up with some comments that should be in the chat room but aren't.  I'd like to have a way to send them there.
35712
I've found strange behavior when closing this  - I definitely see that there are 3 closing votes and 2 of them are at "Off-topic" section:   -but there are no explanations on section itself:   -while, normally, it's expected that it will appear. In custom comments section there are also no closing-votes displayed.   Perhaps it's just my browser (which is FF 26 x64 under Win) - so marking this as a "possible bug". Thank you for your attention.
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Related:    Today, we had . This sort of sparked me into coming up with a new feature-request (Can't find a dupe, surprised).  Basically, we should have more control over what does and does not appear in the multicollider. This includes:   Muting comments and/or answers on a specific post. Muting comments from a specific user Ignoring all comments not addressed to you in a post of yours (I don't think this is that good, though--many times comments address both the OP and the other guy). Ignoring certain chat rooms The ability to make answers/comments on posts written by others to ping your multicollider.   Note that "Mute" could mean that it shows up in the inbox, but doesn't trigger the colorful glowing circle on the multicollider.    With the new "notifications" thing, there may be some scope in making certain notifications opt-in or opt-out (not all of these exist, but many would be useful in the notifications tab):   Notification of rejected edit Notification of  posts Notification of change to favorites Notification of certain badges Notification of edits Notification of edits to posts you have upvoted Notification of edits to posts you have downvoted (yes, should be separate)  - Notification of edits to posts you have closevoted
75389
If I open a post using the mobile theme, which has many comments, there is a link at the footer "add/show n more comments". If this link is clicked, the comments are loaded and displayed.   At the moment the text area is automatically focused which is not a great experience (in my opinion), as you have to close the editor and scroll back to the top if you just wanted to read the comments, without adding a new one.  Would it be possible to either   not focus the text area by default and to load only the comments add a new link for adding a comment
20338
I've noticed this phenomenon a few times before: find a question that was posted 10 minutes ago, look at the questioner's profile.  Last seen 20 minutes ago.  Does updating last seen happen asynchronously with posting a question?  How long might the lag be?  I'm reluctant to , since the phenomenon is probably short lived, but I just noticed it there.  Here are screen images as of this writing...  On the question:        In the profile, clicked a second later:
10556
On , under the comments subtab, there's a giant list of comments. However, they only give links like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/####, which open the page the comment is on but don't move the page to the comment. Could the comment ID be included in the URL such that the page opens to the comment?
17727
Question: For an answer on a stack exchange site with say 8 comments, how can I / is it possible to import the comments into a chat room? Background: I was helping with a  and made several comments before I saw the link to auto-import comments into a chat room.  This was awesome by the way!! Note that the person who asked the question left a link to the chat room in a comment. I wanted to make a similar chat room  because I edited an answer which wasn't mine and added a paragraph.  I wanted to chat with the answer's author @JonHopkins to say, 'hey feel free to remove my edit -- just wanted to add my $0.02' -- especially as the stack exchange engines said not to add an additional answer.  HOWEVER, there was no link to auto-import the comments -- probably because I hadn't previously left one, but I'm not sure. So I ask here, Stack Exchange Gurus, could a static link be added to auto-import a series of comments into a chat session?
124055
On the "Questions" page of each Stack Exchange site, there are links at the top to sort the questions by "newest", "frequent", "votes", "active", and "unanswered".  At least that is what it looks like if I am logged in. If I am on a site that I don't have an account for, or if I am not logged in, the only one I see is "newest".  This seems to have been done recently. I could swear I saw the other links, even when I was not logged in, until a few weeks ago, or maybe later than that.  Why was this change made?
80785
I realise that there is other questions out there about the  (First open one I found is ), but this is marked .  I often get the below issue where it will notify me about comments on my  (in this case what appears to be the user re-writing after deleting their comment) that no longer exist.  Also, occasionally, I see comment snippets with text that doesn't match what is on the page when I view it.  Let me know if I should be trying to edit that one to remove the tag indicating that it has been fixed, and add the above as another answer.
123421
This has happened to me at least 3 times in the past few weeks. Basically, a user asks a question. I put some time and thought in an answer and reply to their question. I come back a bit later to see if they have commented on my answer and I don't have any notifications. Fine then, I check my list of recent answers but I can't find it in there. Perplexed, I check my browser history and retrace the question   I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, but perhaps someone could clear it up for me? Why do people do that? Is it because they realized what the answer was themselves? In this case, they should probably post an answer and accept it, to help other people who will encounter the same problem? Maybe from the answers they were given, they realized that the question's answer was obvious, and are ashamed of having asked it? Even in this case, I still don't think they should delete the question, but instead accept an answer and thus reward those who gave time answering their question, and maybe help others with the same problem in the future.  Am I the only one seeing this or is this a common problem? I wish I could retrace all the times this has happened to me. Is there something that can be done against this?
49816
I've seen so many should-be-a-comment &quot;edits&quot; or &quot;answers&quot; in the review queues by new users, and it's pretty obvious that to them this was the only way to somehow interact with a question due to their lack of allowance to leave a comment. And sometimes (just sometimes) this comment would contribute something useful. So it's a shame to waste reviewers' time to first figure out that a suggested &quot;edit&quot; / &quot;answer&quot; should actually be a comment and then not exactly having tools to turn the former into an actual comment. If the new user would instead have had the possibility to clearly indicate that they wanted to leave a comment which would then be put into a simple &quot;comments (by low-rep users)&quot; review queue, where reviewers could maybe even leave one of the (more specific) automated comments à la &quot;You should ask this as a new question&quot; (where new question might even not only link to the &quot;ask question&quot; site but put the users comment into the title or body). And until approval the comment would by default by hidden by a &quot;on hold&quot; line that only higher-rep users, say &gt;500, could toggle to view (and vote to approve directly in place). This is typical practice in many blogs' comments, and I think since we're community reviewing anyway this might be improve the hijacking situation. edit Note that by design those automated comments would not need to trigger a notification to the post's OP but only to the commenter. Whether the un-reviewed comment should already trigger a notification to the OP or not is a different question. I propose not, since the obvious once-in-a-while spam comment would be easier detected by a reviewer who is currently concentrating on specifically determining the validity of a comment. edit2 As noted in  these auto-replies should not clutter the original post - once a comment has been determined &quot;Actually I want to ask a new question&quot; they (and the reply) won't show up below the post except for the original commenter who will also be notified if they registered.  In summary:  Low-rep user posts a comment -&gt; Below the post there will be a &quot;1 comment under review&quot; link and that comment will be added to the comment-review queue (see images below). No notification will be triggered for the OP, since the high likelihood of an unjustified comment was the reason for comments originally not being post-able by just anyone If a reviewer approves the comment, it will show up like any usual comment and now a notification to the OP (and @replied-to users) will be sent If a reviewer rejects the comment (with an optional reason as reply), it won't be shown below the original post as &quot;under review&quot; anymore. It, together with the reply, will be visible to the original commenter who will be notified, but no one else will be bothered by it edit3 As per : The commenter will not be able to post further comments until their comment is either reviewed or self-deleted. As , a negative review/flag should refute that user's ability to comment any more (or reduce a very low contingent of unreviewed comments allowed)
121937
I noticed  (10k only) that there is "show 2 more comments":        Clicking it has no effect.  Viewing the raw server response, it simply returns the existing comments.  This is most likely the result of , which somehow fails to update the comments count on the spammer's posts, in case they wrote comments. (And yes, I am sure those two comments have been written by that user, as I've seen them before the account was deleted.)  Can this please be fixed?  Not sure if it matters, but as can be seen in the screenshot, the question was deleted before the account has been destroyed.
44879
Commenting is one of the unsung heroes of Stack Exchange. :   Request clarification from the author; Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post; Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).   These are all essential for coordinating the creation of useful questions and answers, but originally comments were not part of the design for this system! During the beta period, it was observed that, without a way to annotate or discuss specific posts, answers became noisy and tangential. Therefore, a separate space was carved out for this purpose below each post, leaving answers free for content that, y'know, actually tries to answer the question. This created a problem, however: how do we expose useful comments inline with answers without adding back the same amount of noise comments were created to alleviate? . This simple strategy proved to be quite durable, working admirably in most common cases - but it suffers from a few drawbacks:  Comments can become obsolete, addressing issues or concerns long ago addressed via edits to the post itself. Those one-liner contests Jeff alluded to don't always produce results as  as one might like. With the addition of comment replies and real-time notifications, comments can be used for casual conversation and debate - fun and perhaps even enlightening for those involved, noise for those just looking for an answer.  Thus the need for comment moderation. This involves three groups of people:  The authors of the comments themselves can clean up after they're done, if they so desire.  can flag comments in response to the issues noted above, bringing them to the attention of the moderators. (They can also vote on comments, controlling to a degree which ones are shown)  can remove individual comments or entire comment threads, , and even  posts if comments are getting unruly.  This raises several questions, which I'll try to address below:        These guidelines are based on the authors' experience moderating comments on various sites. Individual communities, particularly on meta sites, may benefit from additional guidelines - this guide is intended as a baseline.
19020
One screenshot will explain it the best:    It shouldn't be there - appeared right after posting the comment. When reloading the page it disappears so something goes awry with the AJAX handling.  Clicking it is reloading the existing comment(s) and open the new comment text box.