And now...instant comment posting seems to have disappeared again 🙄

[gordo12]

Just posted a complimentary comment, and it was sent to moderation despite being under my username.

I guess we're playing comment ping pong!

 

[Rustyoznail]

I hadn't realised it came back. All comments I've left have been held for a few hours, at least.

 

[RoperTrace]

Do you mean a story comment? I thought they all went to moderation prior to being posted, but maybe I'm mistaken.

 

[gordo12]

Do you mean a story comment? I thought they all went to moderation prior to being posted, but maybe I'm mistaken.

Nope, a couple of weeks back, registered member comments started posting instantly again. There's a thread on it. Now it seems to have disappeared again.
Only the anon comments were being sent to moderation.

 

[gordo12]

Here: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/comment-posted-immediately.1585227/

 

[RoperTrace]

Nope, a couple of weeks back, registered member comments started posting instantly again. There's a thread on it. Now it seems to have disappeared again.
Only the anon comments were being sent to moderation.

I have never left an anonymous comment in 20 years. But I get error messages quite often when posting on this site and a few others. Usually gets fixed in an hour or less.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My impression was that comment spam tends to come in waves, and that the changes in comment pre-moderation behaviour are in response to those waves.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I think part of the increased responsiveness might have been attributed to what were probably site upgrades that borked the site for a few hours one evening. There was probably a moderator testing stuff out for a while there and moderating specifically to do the testing. Just a guess; maybe it’ll improve again. Or maybe things have slowed down for Easter. Or one of a number of other things.

 

[TxRad]

Yeah, I hate getting that Easter egg spam.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What it means is that instant comments were mostly a temporary byproduct of implementing those new features for readers. Shocking, eh?

 

[ChloeTzang]

Well, I just wrote a comment in reply to a comment on one of my stories and it went thru instantly

 

[gordo12]

Well, I just wrote a comment in reply to a comment on one of my stories and it went thru instantly

Yep, just tried it on mine, and it went through instantly. Maybe a tech problem this morning.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I wrote mine yesterday and it took almost 24 hours to go through.

 

[NoTalentHack]

For the people that are curious about this, I think I've figured out what's going on. I believe the site has implemented a tier system with at least two tiers: "safe" commenters and "unsafe" ones.

After publishing a couple of LW stories over the last month, I can see a pattern. "Fathers, Brothers, and Sons" got ~150 comments since I posted it yesterday. In the early hours, I got a smattering of comments in ones and twos. That went on through midday, when a flood of them came in, many of them anonymous. Then it was ones and twos again until this morning. But if I look at the comments moderation screen in the "My Stories" section of "Works," the bursts of comments are shown interspersed with the ones that came in by themselves. So I'll see "User commented 8 hours ago," followed by a few "User commented 1 hour ago" and then "User commented 7 hours ago."

So the way it (probably) works is that the comments go into a queue, which the "safe users" immediately get out of, seeing their comments posted almost immediately; there's probably a quick check to see if there are any no-nos (external links, banned words, etc.) but no human moderations. And then a moderator goes through like they always have and moderates the "unsafe" comments.

This also tracks with who is in that theoretical "safe" category, the folks whose comments came in one at a time outside of those bursts of 40+ comments. They're people that have a reasonably long posting history, who pretty much never personally attack anyone, and have never said anything that I've seen as incendiary on mine or others' stories. I don't know if this determination is made on a per-person basis or some combination of "number of comments this person has made vs. how many we've had to moderate" by an algorithm. I know that I had to wait for one of my comments to be posted, but I also don't comment much myself. Which, ah, sorry. I like stuff, but I forget!

So, yes, "instant" comments are probably implemented, but not for everyone, I don't think.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

For the people that are curious about this, I think I've figured out what's going on. I believe the site has implemented a tier system with at least two tiers: "safe" commenters and "unsafe" ones.

After publishing a couple of LW stories over the last months, I can see a pattern. "Fathers, Brothers, and Sons" got ~150 comments since I posted it yesterday. In the early hours, I got a smattering of comments in ones and twos. That went on through midday, when a flood of them came in, many of them anonymous. Then it was ones and twos again until this morning. But if I look at the comments moderation screen in the "My Stories" section of "Works," the bursts of comments are shown interspersed with the ones that came in by themselves. So I'll see "User commented 8 hours ago," followed by a few "User commented 1 hour ago" and then "User commented 7 hours ago."

So the way it (probably) works is that the comments go into a queue, which the "safe users" immediately get out of, seeing their comments posted almost immediately; there's probably a quick check to see if there are any non-nos (external links, banned words, etc.) but no human moderations. And then a moderator goes through like they always have and moderates the "unsafe" comments.

This also tracks with who is in that theoretical "safe" category, the folks whose comments came in one at a time outside of those bursts of 40+ comments. They're people that have a reasonably long posting history, who pretty much never personally attack anyone, and have never said anything that I've seen as incendiary on mine or others' stories. I don't know if this determination is made on a per-person basis or some combination of "number of comments this person ahs made vs. how many we've had to moderate" by an algorithm. I know that I had to wait for one of my comments to be posted, but I also don't comment much myself. Which, ah, sorry. I like stuff, but I forget!

So, yes, "instant" comments are probably implemented, but not for everyone, I don't think.

I don't think instant comments are working for anyone, otherwise the author of a story wouldn't need to wait 12-24 hours to get his comment approved. He should be considered a safe commenter, especially if he has no prior history of misconduct, no? That is how comments work for me, at least. I don't think my comment has ever been approved in less than 8 hours or so. My bet is that comments get looked at and approved at certain hours during the day - let's say twice per day, so it is all about how close to that specific hour you have posted a comment and of course, how big is the queue. Needless to say that this is one thing we have been wanting for quite a while, but other than some speculations about instant comments "being in development" , nothing has really been going on for a long time. I seriously doubt we will ever get there.
If there are people for whom comments are instantaneous in a consistent manner, I would ask them to come forward. It has been a while since I've created a controversial thread (or anyone else )

 

[NoTalentHack]

I don't think instant comments are working for anyone, otherwise the author of a story wouldn't need to wait 12-24 hours to get his comment approved. He should be considered a safe commenter, especially if he has no prior history of misconduct, no? That is how comments work for me, at least. I don't think my comment has ever been approved in less than 8 hours or so. My bet is that comments get looked at and approved at certain hours during the day - let's say twice per day, so it is all about how close to that specific hour you have posted a comment and of course, how big is the queue. Needless to say that this is one thing we have been wanting for quite a while, but other than some speculations about instant comments "being in development" , nothing has really been going on for a long time. I seriously doubt we will ever get there.
If there are people for whom comments are instantaneous in a consistent manner, I would ask them to come forward. It has been a while since I've created a controversial thread (or anyone else )

I'm a software developer, so I'm online pretty much all day, and I leave a browser tab open to my Feed that I check... probably more often than I should. I also tend to wake up in the middle of the night, and if I've posted a new story, I'll check to see how it's doing, so I have a pretty good realtime view of what's happening in the feed.

The pattern is very clear: one comment coming in every once in a while (obviously more often on newer stories) from familiar names, then, on a new story, a flood of anonymous comments, ones from people that have a history of being incendiary, or with a limited commenting history two or three times a day. It happened on FBaS, and it happened on "Why She Cheated."

One other piece of evidence: on any of the ones who both had a "fast" comment and favorited the story (or added me to their Following list), they tend to show up within a minute or so of each other in the feed. But on the ones that are in the "batches" of commenters, if they favorite the story/me, it shows up hours earlier, in between the batch postings.

 

[NoTalentHack]

And here's another piece of evidence that I just found: the comments in the comment moderation in My Stories are in a different order than the ones on the actual comments page on the story itself. The latter are in true chronological order, but the ones in the My Stories comment moderation page are in an order that matches up with the behavior of batches backfilling in between "safe/instant" comments. It's much more noticeable if you look shortly after they're posted (since the times are measured in hours/minutes if you catch them fast enough), but it's definitely there.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'm a software developer, so I'm online pretty much all day, and I leave a browser tab open to my Feed that I check... probably more often than I should. I also tend to wake up int he middle of the night, and if I've posted a new story, I'll check to see how it's doing, so I have a pretty good realtime view of what's happening in the feed.

The pattern is very clear: one comment coming in every once in a while (obviously more often on newer stories) from familiar names, then, on a new story, a flood of anonymous comments, ones from people that have a history of being incendiary, or with a limited commenting history two or three times a day. It happened on FBaS, and it happened on "Why She Cheated."

One other piece of evidence: on any of the ones who both had a "fast" comment and favorited the story (or added me to their Following list), they tend to show up within a minute or so of each other in the feed. But on the ones that are in the "batches" of commenters, if they favorite the story/me, it shows up hours earlier, in between the batch postings.

Somewhat inconclusive, but I understand how you formed your opinion. How long does it usually take for your comment to be approved?

 

[NoTalentHack]

Somewhat inconclusive, but I understand how you formed your opinion. How long does it usually take for your comment to be approved?

I very rarely comment on my own stuff, so I don't know. I am pretty certain I'm in the "unsafe" queue, though, because when I comment on other peoples' stuff, it goes in with other peoples comments.

Also, here's a screenshot of what I meant about the times being "wrong" in the queue, in a way that matches up with two tiers of posters:



If you go over to the comments underneath the story, though, all of the "five hours ago" comments are lumped together, as are all of the "22 and 21 hours ago" ones. The latter are all from people that I, personally, would consider "safe," in that I've never seen them go nuclear on anyone, even if they have a negative opinion of a work or writer.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Wouldn't that also be the comment behavior according to my own theory?
I mean, if comments get looked at some specific time and then approved, that is exactly how the whole thing would look like. It is still possible that registered users' comments get higher in the queue, but still... In that example, there are only comments from 5 hours ago and 21 hours ago, presumably the two moments when a moderator decided to review and approve them. The difference in comments showing up on your control panel and on the story as everyone else sees it, is actually consistent with the fact that different parts of website get updated at a different time - something that I can confirm by my own experience and I believe many others can say the same thing.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Wouldn't that also be the comment behavior according to my own theory?
I mean, if comments get looked at some specific time and then approved, that is exactly how the whole thing would look like. It is still possible that registered users' comments get higher in the queue, but still... In that example, there are only comments from 5 hours ago and 21 hours ago, presumably the two moments when a moderator decided to review and approve them. The difference in comments showing up on your control panel and on the story as everyone else sees it, is actually consistent with the fact that different parts of website get updated at a different time - something that I can confirm by my own experience and I believe many others can say the same thing.

My theory is that there's an internal moderation queue (for Manu/Laurel/Whoever else is working on it), then the writer's moderation queue, then what goes out to the story. The stuff that makes it through the top moderation gets dropped into the writer's moderation (whether because of "safe" poster or batch moderation) is in that weird format. I've watched it backfill in between other entries as it gets dumped in there; that is, in the writer queue, but not on the site yet. It has a certain amount of time in the writer queue, and then the stuff that's in the writer queue, i.e., the comments that the writer hasn't marked for deletion, get bundled up by the batch process that updates the more static pages on the site (stories, for example, which is why the ratings/favorites stats don't change anywhere near real time) and shown to the users.

So the stuff in the writer's moderation queue is in there in order of "when the comment came into the top level queue", not in terms of when it made it into the writer queue. And then, it's posted out to the queue that takes the comments and makes them available to the users, but at that point, it doesn't interweave them; instead, it puts them in the order that they made it out of the second queue, i.e., the "safe" comments get priority. I'll show you what I mean. Here's the first 10 comments in the queue on the writer moderation side:



And here's the first 9 in the comments on the story:



Those three anonymous comments in the moderation queue don't show up after the story itself until after all of the "safe" ones, nor does the one by Twentyseven, who has a history of being fairly incendiary.

So, TL;DR: comments go into the top-level (Manu/Laurel) queue in the order they're written. Then, safe ones immediately go into the writer queue; these ones are written into another table/file as they come in, the one that will be used for generating the comments pages that readers see. Then, as Manu/Laurel moderate and release comments in batches, they go into writer's moderation queue, but they "backfill" there, so that the comments there are also displayed in order of submission. Once they've spent a little time in that queue, giving the writer a chance to moderate/delete them, they get written into the table/file that is used to generate the page the readers see. But when they're written there, it first checks to see if a comment already exists in the user-visible comment table, and if it is, doesn't write it in. If it's not, it appends them to the table. The "X time ago" on that page is different from the one in the writer moderation page, because the time on the user-facing page is "how long ago this got all the way through the process," while the "X time ago" on the writer moderation page is when it went into the writer moderation queue.

Whew.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Oh, and also, here's the most recent ones:


A single comment in at 3 hours, another single one in at 1 (closer to 1.5, I was looking when it came in), one at 54, one at 41, and then two back to back at 30. It's much more pronounced on the first day and the morning of the second day, but the time has slipped away for me to show it; this morning, the feed for comments was like "7 hours ago, 5 hours, 4 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour" and then like fifty comments all at once within the space of about half an hour. And then when I looked into the moderation queue, they were doing that weird interleaved thing.

 

[Trionyx]

Also, here's a screenshot of what I meant about the times being "wrong" in the queue, in a way that matches up with two tiers of posters:

I noticed the same phenomenon of comments being out of order the other day and was puzzled by it. Your explanation certainly could explain it.

 

[djrip]

I don't think instant comments are working for anyone, otherwise the author of a story wouldn't need to wait 12-24 hours to get his comment approved. He should be considered a safe commenter, especially if he has no prior history of misconduct, no? That is how comments work for me, at least. I don't think my comment has ever been approved in less than 8 hours or so. My bet is that comments get looked at and approved at certain hours during the day - let's say twice per day, so it is all about how close to that specific hour you have posted a comment and of course, how big is the queue. Needless to say that this is one thing we have been wanting for quite a while, but other than some speculations about instant comments "being in development" , nothing has really been going on for a long time. I seriously doubt we will ever get there.
If there are people for whom comments are instantaneous in a consistent manner, I would ask them to come forward. It has been a while since I've created a controversial thread (or anyone else )

My comments have been instant or within a few minutes since that started happening like a few weeks or a month ago.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

My comments have been instant or within a few minutes since that started happening like a few weeks or a month ago.

You are saying that for weeks now, all your comments have been published instantly or near instantly? How often do you comment?