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by User9812 4385 days ago
Not sure why you were downvoted, but I completely agree. I get the 'Unknown or expired link' message all the time because I'll write long comments, or write part of a comment, get sidetracked, then finish. There's no reason for this error message, and to have tokens time out after what feels like a matter of minutes.

Then of course this happens on the homepage too, when you click 'more', after being inactive for a while. Why?

And why is there no pagination?

Why do a click reply on a comment and get redirected to a completely separate page, instead of replying inline? And then when I submit that comment, it just redirects me to the top of the comment page, so I have no idea where I left off, and now the comments might be shuffled since votes have changed.

These feel like critical changes that benefit everyone, and require little work. Why are they never addressed after years?
2 comments
TheLoneWolfling 4385 days ago
Its because this website was designed using a neat and novel model, that ultimately doesn't work.

(Most links on this website (ones with ids at least) are associated with state, stored on the server as opposed to in the link / cookie / etc. As there are an absurd number of links accessible at any one time, the number of serverside state objects that need to be stored gets excessive, so they get garbage collected after a while.)

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DanBC 4385 days ago
It's a way of warning you that someone else might have made the same point that you're about to make and that you should reply in a fresh thread.

Prepare your replies in a text editor and copy 'n' paste them to the new text entry box.

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User9812 4385 days ago
I simply can't believe that's the reason. It's an error message, not a warning. It doesn't check if new comments have been posted to that thread, it doesn't prompt you with the new comments, and ask if you want to continue with the post, and it doesn't make it easy to go back to the original thread to check if there are new comments.

Asking users to type in an external text editor, and then copy/paste isn't a reasonable solution for a message board.

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DanBC 4385 days ago
Well, have fun with your continued error messages I guess.
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