Phanpy doesn't load all posts by the owner of a thread

[nhan000]

Describe the bug

Open the 1st post of a 10-post thread shows only 2 posts and then other people's replies. Happen with both the dev and regular phanpy sites.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to https://phanpy.social/
2. Search for this post https://journa.host/@timkmak/110186589126000966
3. Open the post and see it displays correctly the full 10 posts before other people's comments.
4. Do either of the following things to see the bug: a) Refresh the page. b) Switch to post's instance.

Now you'll only see 2 posts and have to click the 2nd, and then click the 3rd post to show the full thread.

Expected behavior See all 10 posts of a thread when click the 1st post in thread.

Screenshots What I expected:

Bug:

Desktop (please complete the following information): Windows 11, Edge browser, all updated.

Additional context

• I don't know if it's a bug from the Mastodon client itself, but if you click https://journa.host/@timkmak/110186589126000966 you'll also see only 2 posts of the thread.
• Elk Zone is able to handle it correctly, as is Phanpy from the search results, but not when refresh the page or switch to post instance.

[cheeaun]

Ok I did a little research. Turns out Mastodon has a limit on the context API https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/4db8230194258a9a1c3d17d7261608515f3f2067/app/controllers/api/v1/statuses_controller.rb#L15-L24

In short:

• If you're logged in, defaults to 4096 ancestors (posts above) and descendants (posts below) and unlimited depths (replies of replies of replies and so on).
• If you're NOT logged in, defaults to 40 ancestors, 60 descendants and 20 depth. It'll cut off once reached the limit.

This means when you switch to the post's instance and not logged in to that instance, you're seeing a "limited" view of the whole post thread/conversation.

[nhan000]

Thanks a lot for the investigation! I'm sorry I still don't really understand your explanation although I have read it multiple times 😂 (and you don't have to re-explain it to me. I understand that it's a limitation of Mastodon itself).

Anyway, there's one point in my reply I want to address again. That after surfacing the post from the search the "bug" (or the context API limit) will appear when you refresh the page (Ctrl + R or F5).

I don't know if you have done anything during the past few hours but that so-called bug triggered by refreshing has disappeared in the dev version but is still there in the regular site in mastodon.social but not in pkm.social:

How it looks in pkm.social (same thing for pkm.social and mastodon.social on dev site, just don't want to paste 3 similar images to avoid cluttering the reply)

However, the context limit appears in the mastodon.social