Missing comments in large discussions

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What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Go to 
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/b7s/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationa
lity/

Observe how the “Comments” section shows a count of more than 900 comments. 
(It shows 929 as I’m writing this.)

2. Using a suitable feature of your browser (I’m using Chrome’s dev tools), 
inspect something like « jQuery("div.comment").length »

Observe how the result shows the number of comments you have selected in the 
option box at the right (it’s 500, in my case, not sure if there’s a 
preference for that).

3. Either (a) click the “Load all comments” pseudo-link at the top of the 
comments section, or (b) scroll to the bottom and click “load more comments 
(### replies)” at the bottom (in my case, it says 338, which is sufficiently 
less than 929-500=429 to suggest it isn’t just counting the not-loaded thread 
tails spread between the comments above).

Observe how it doesn’t seem to add nearly that many comments to the list.

4. Repeat step 2. Observe how the number of comments is just a bit higher than 
above (in my case, clicking the bottom link gives 520 total comments, and the 
link disappears; when clicking the top link the count reaches 545).

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

* I’d expect it to load all 900+ comments, but it only seems like about 50 
are added to the normal display. 

I know there are a few deep threads that are not shown completely unless 
clicking on “continue this thread” link, but I’ve been following this 
particular discussion and looking at those threads, and there should be at most 
a dozen or two comments hidden because of that.

What version of which web browser are you using? On what operating system?

I’m using Google Chrome version 17.0.963.79 on Linux Mint.

Please provide any additional information below.

Note that I haven’t actually noticed any missing comments. (I probably 
couldn’t among that many.) It’s also a bit suspicious that it reached 434 
comments two days after publishing (according to one comment), and 900+ another 
two days after that. I’d have expected it to grow slower in the second couple 
of days.  It *could* just be counting them incorrectly.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by bogd...@gmail.com on 1 Apr 2012 at 3:56

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Original comment by wjmo...@gmail.com on 22 Apr 2012 at 11:17

• Changed state: Accepted

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Original comment by Matthew.Fallshaw on 3 Aug 2012 at 6:05

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This may be the same bug or a different one:

When searching lesswrong for 'paraphilia', there are four hits, and the last 
hit is the very large Procedural Knowledge Gaps thread.  The preview for that 
link has the following text: "I've also seen it work on other people who 
frequent /b/, both for bisexuality and many paraphilias."

However, if I go to that thread and repeatedly click 'Load more comments' links 
until there are none left, the text from the preview never shows up.  (It did 
take a little while).

Thread is here: http://lesswrong.com/r/all/lw/453/procedural_knowledge_gaps/

Original comment by micha...@schooladmin.com on 11 Mar 2013 at 4:22

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@michaelw Visiting the page you linked to and searching for "both for 
bisexuality and many paraphilias" seems to find the comment on the page for me. 
I have the Sort by selector at the top set to 'Best'.

Original comment by wjmo...@gmail.com on 11 Mar 2013 at 11:21