Comments missing on article: The End

The comments section on the article "The End" seems to be gone, I have tested on Both Chrome and in IE11 and the bottom of the page contains no comments and no option to leave a comment, clicking on the link near the top of the article that would normally jump you down to the comments does nothing at all.

I don't know if this is intentional because the huge numbers of comments caused issues or its a bug in the comment system, but if it is intentional I would like confirmation of that fact.

I hope it's because Patrick decided to reconsider :(

Might be because there are so many. At the top right of the article's body is the comment count, which is currently 1541.

Though it's extra weird because the forum thread of those comments is also unreachable. (seen here: http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/the-end-1758192/?page=1)

@ssully:

I also thought the number of comments might be part of the issue, but there are articles with far more comments on them where the comment system still works.

For example the article announcing the passing of Ryan Davis, which has around 8000 comments.

So it seems unlikely that the comment system is malfunction just because of the number of comments.

Just hoping they didnt go south and were removed as a result since last i saw them it really warmed my heart how genuine and nice pretty much every one was.

I peaked in there a number of times and the comments were unanimously positive. Maybe the mods were working overtime deleting negative comments and we just didn't notice. If that was the case it'd make sense that they'd decide to close the comments so they can move on.

@development:

That does seem like the most likely theory for the time being, considering how low the chances are that the comment thread for the article was deleted by accident.

Though if that is the case then that make me somewhat sad as I expect better than that of the community at large, also if that is the case I would still like to have it officially confirmed just so that there's zero doubt that this is a bug or a mistake.

That doesn't explain why all the comments would just disappear, though. If a thread/article is being tracked by the mods and they decide to temporarily (if not permanently) lock it they... lock it. The comments should still be visible. I think it'd be unprecedented if the mods/staff also happened to completely remove the comments section entirely. It's probably just a bug of some kind I would think; this is Giant Bomb after all. Something's always breaking in some way or another.

@yummylee: Maybe, I donno. Hard to say. Paging mods...

I doubt it's anything malicious, notifications have been wonky for a few days now and being the holidays I bet the place is largely running on auto pilot.

Probably a site burp of some sort.

Unfortunately, we felt the need to lock the comments on that article due to a constant stream of unsavory elements from around the internet streaming in to celebrate Patrick leaving as some sort of perceived victory over a personal affront or some such nonsense. It's something we don't like doing but reserve the right to do when we feel it's appropriate. That shouldn't have done anything to the comments that were already there, but given the site's perpetual state of being half-broken, it's not entirely surprising.

@chaser324: that fucking sucks. and here i thought we were being collectively awesome as a group (well i guess it was mostly outsiders, so that probably still holds true). hopefully we can recover the comments as a nice little testament to klip-klop's stint here.

@chaser324:

Hmm so that really is what happened, somewhat sad to hear that negative comments was flooding the thread, but taking that into consideration I definitively understand why you decided to lock the thread and do not blame you for it, I just found it strange that the comments seemed to disappear entirely, so thank you for clearing up what was going on with them, and confirming that there is something at least a bit buggy going on here.

Thats a shame, something like this shouldnt block people from saying their Goodbyes and wellwishes to Patrick.

I think it was a programming error; I don't think we intentionally locked the thread. I'll see about restoring those posts.

These should be back now.

@rorie: They are back, but the respective forum page (linked within this thread) still seems to 404 (and the URL seems fine?).

@snail Good catch. Relinked the topic to the forum.