I am aware of the wonkiness in Betty’s Budgets and Bad Faith post.
Bringing up the post
- It shows as 20 comments on the front page.
- It shows as 20 comments if I use the fly-out to get there.
- It shows as 20 comments if I’m logged in as a front-pager.
- It shows as 20 comments if I’m a regular person, not logged in.
- It does this in Safari and Chrome, I didn’t test other browsers, but I’m sure it’s universal.
Posting a comment makes all the comments show up
- If I post a comment as a front-pager, every comment shows up.
- If I post a comment as a a regular person, every comment shows up.
- If I refresh the page after posting a comment, every comment shows up.
I assume those things are true for all of you. If not, please chime in, with details.
What I don’t know is whether the most current post is also wonky
Can you chime in either way?
Also, now that I have published this post, I would love to know whether the wonkiness occurs for you in this one, as well.
Open thread.
Scout211
I’m on a mac with Chrome browser and yes, if I go to Betty C’s thread and click on refresh, all the comments magically reappear.
rikyrah
Thank you for trying to deal with this.
me
I just got an error posting a comment
The comment I tried to post said that with Firefox it shows 20 comments. Sometimes but not everytime it will show all the comments after a refresh without posting a comment.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: So you don’t have to comment in order to get more than 20 comments to appear?
David Collier-Brown
Refresh had no effect on Chrome on Ubuntu, and when I posted a comment I got
After that, refreshing shows all the new posts.
Scout211
@Scout211: Correction.
All the comments magically reappear only if I scroll down into the comment section. Refresh doesn’t work if I click it while reading Betty’s post.
Also, if I leave the thread and come back, it registers the 20 comments. If I scroll down the the comments and then refresh, I see 108 comments.
So the refresh isn’t permanent for me.
Scout211
No, but I didn’t try to comment. See my #6. I had to scroll down to the comments to get the refresh to work. And it was not permanent.
I’ll try with a comment now.
mrmoshpotato
Android phone with DuckDuckGo browser – BC’s post says 20 comments, but I can see all 110
Added – now the link is reporting 112 comments
Added – now back to reporting 20 comments
HinTN
Betty’s post says 20 on the front page and shows 20 total in the comments section. My Test comment became #111.
Duck Duck Go on an Android Samsung S24.
Scout211
I posted a comment and then left balloon-juice. When I came back to balloon-juice, the same thing happened. Comments in Betty’s thread were back to 20.
So refreshing (but down thread) and commenting will bring the comments back but it’s not permanent.
prostratedragon
Firefox on android just now did not work. Testing Samsung browser now …
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon: That works.
Old School
I see all comments on the thread, but haven’t posted.
The header says there are only 20, but going to the bottom of the page says there are 112(?).
me
Sometimes when I refresh the front page, this post and previous disappear.
Old School
And Betty’s wonky post doesn’t think there are any posts made after that one. (No right arrow.)
MattF
@Old School: Same here. Safari on iPad. Header always says ‘20 comments’ but paging down to the bottom shows all the comments… but not always— on trying again, I see only 20 comments.
Suzanne
@Scout211: Same for me….. refreshing fixes it.
NotMax
Newest version of Firefox on a PC running Windows 10.. Counter on Betty’s post shows 20, while as of this last viewing 113 comments showing up. Same situation after refreshes.
tobie
Refreshing without commenting doesn’t change the total. I’ll try again after this comment.
ETA: Commented in this thread at #18. Comment came as #19. Not showing anything after that.
Baud
WaterGirl, when I put a Blue sky embed code into the Code pane, I can’t switch back to visual.
Betty
Using Kindle/Silk browser. When I first went back and hit refresh on BC’s post, all the comments appeared. When I tried going back a second time, I couldn’t get more than 20 comments by refreshing and an error message when trying to comment.
Josie
Using Firefox on a Mac. Header says 20 comments. On refresh, I can see 114 comments.
I commented with no problem (116). Header still says 20 comments.
Baud
I didn’t notice any wonkiness in any other post after Betty’s.
Betty
I just went back to check again and all the comments were there without refreshing or commenting. ???
Another Scott
Don’t know if it matters, but on Chrome in a Private Browsing window with uBlock Origin Lite installed, looking at BC’s thread (I normally have uBOL turned up all the way):
New tab, uBOL turned off.
Use flyout to get back to BC’s thread.
Comment counter says “20” and there are 20 comments. Same on Shift-F5 (force full refresh).
uBOL turned on to “Basic” (1 click).
20 in counter, 20 comments. Shift-F5 causes comment counter to say “20” but there are actually 114 comments shown now. Normal F5 refresh only shows 20 comments now. Shift-F5 shows 114 comments while counter still says 20.
uBOL turned to “Optimal” (+1 click).
20 in counter, 20 comments. Shift-F5 still only shows 20 in counter, 20 comments.
uBOL turned on to “Complete” (+1 click).
20 in counter, 114 comments. Shift-F5 shows 20 in counter, 114 comments. F5 gives 20, 114. Shift-F5 gives 20, 114.
But I was only seeing 20 comments earlier, so something seems to be path dependent. Or you’re already trying to fix it. ;-)
uBOL on Chrome Web Store
I hope this helps track down the problem a little.
Thanks for all you do.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jackie
@Baud: You shouldn’t have said that…
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon: Android firefox works real good after you notice your nym needs re-entry when the cookies are cleared.
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: I saw 26 on my entrance. I’ll click post if I see the final 6. (I see them).
Captain C
I don’t know if it’s relevant, but when it does the 20 comments thing for me it also doesn’t show the rotating tags.
Baud
You may have noticed but Recent Comments is affected too.
WTFGhost
I’m seeing the issue on Budgets and Bad Faith – I know there’s more than 20 comments in there, I’m pretty sure I posted a few. Duckduckgo, 0.118.
Opening Budgets and Badi Faith, I could see all comments, but the count of the number of comments stayed at 20. This is looking like a sick (corrupted) index, but, I think “possible corruption” early
ETA: unless my comments vanished into moderation, I don’t see anything I posted in Budgets and Bad Faith. I wish I could swear I did post, but, with my brain? I can’t promise anything.
lowtechcyclist
On my phone, the counter at the top of the page said 20 comments, but there were over 100 when I scrolled down.
Scout211
I was about to post that. Leaving the site and then returning, the recent comments sidebar lists Matt McIrvin’s comment in Betty’s thread at 2:41 pm as the most recent. I posted this comment and now my comment is the only comment listed above Matt’s 2:42 pm comment.
Definitely wonky.
WTFGhost
@Baud: That’s looking more and more like an indexing issue – if any MySQL sysadmins can look through the logs, if there is a corrupt index, it should be pretty obvious
Baud
@WTFGhost:
There are no logs! Obama and Hillary wrote the logs!
Baud
Refreshing to the main page also doesn’t always pull up the most recent post. Sometimes requires a second refresh.
Timill
The previous thread (“well that was fun”) is also giving me problems. I keep getting a 104-comment version, and occasionally more. Currently it’s reverted to 104, and at least one comment of mine has vanished entirely,
Looking at the error in comment 3 here makes me think it’s the server serving up old, cached, versions.
WTFGhost
@Timill: Yes, Redis seems to be caching software, and it would be the sort of thing that would cache certain application data, and serve it up, rather than force database queries to run every single time. If it’s not working properly, people could get varying results.
This is not the kind of problem I’d want someone bringing to *me*, late in the day, back in the old days
ETA: just to clarify, the first steps in the problem solving would be to check Redis configuration, then, check to see that WP is supposed to be using it, then, check Redis logs for anything cray-cray. *Never* skip this step! Then, try to clean up the Redis, until it’s working properly, then, same thing on the database, and, hopefully, once they’re both working, and error free, the problem will go away.
Assuming the right level of logging is turned on, and the log entries are helpful, that is.
(Seriously: always skim the logs for cray-cray; you don’t want to find cray-cray after you’ve been banging your head against “normal” for twelve hours! )
Tony Jay
Yup. In the earlier Open Thread Timmil’s comment about there still being just 104 comments was at Comment 109, with my responses to WG and Geminid being at 107 and 108, and now it’s stuck on 104 and they’re all eaten up.
WaterGirl
@Baud: How is recent comments affected?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
The most recent recent comment is Matt M’s #20.
lowtechcyclist
In Firefox, loading Betty C’s post from the main page, same deal as everyone else: just 20 posts until I do a test comment, then there are 119.
WTFGhost
I found this link that has general troubleshooting for redis issues in WordPress:
rosehosting.com/blog/how-to-fix-the-error-establishing-a-redis-connection-error/
Now, you’re only sometimes having people see redis connection errors, but this includes how to check for Redis issues, and it sounds like it’s wordpress oriented.
ruckus
WG
That still shows up as 20 comments for me in Safari
This one here is 44 so at least it’s not totally broken…
And this shows up for me with only 43 comments – says I’m #44 so who knows
ruckus
I refreshed Safari and it showed 44. Let’s see if this one works.
Martin
If I had to guess, somewhere in the bowels of WP plug-ins is one that handles comment paging, as 20 comments is a common default. Something is causing the page to stop rendering at the comment page limit, and because we don’t do comment paging on this blog, the next/previous page controls aren’t in the page HTML which would help to identify the problem.
It’s bypassing when someone comments probably because that invalidates the cache for that user causing the whole page to show up. So I’d be looking where the WP Redis page/comment caching intersects with the comment paging system.
sxjames
Regarding the Budgets and Bad Faith tread – yes, I see 20 comments and the first time I visited that tread there were only 20 displayed. After clicking away to read this tread then maneuvering back to the Bad Faith thread, I see all comments. However, the front page still only says 20.
I’m on a PC, Windows 10 (yeah, I’m an old.)
Martin
@Martin: More specifically, the way the caching system probably works (I never worked on WP) is that Redis generates a cached versions of the page every time someone comments, and when a page is requested it’s served up from the cache. But when Redis is requesting a page be generated it’s getting the ‘only show 20 comments per page’ default SQL query generated so the page being cached only shows 20 comments. But when you post, because you just added the comment, and the cache likely hasn’t had time to generate the page and store it, it serve you up a page directly from the database which isn’t putting that 20 comment constraint in the SQL query so you get a full page. Not sure why it’s only happening to some pages and not others.
But I’d be looking at the code pathway that Redis uses to request a page for the cache. My guess is that there’s a different template or some such for Redis to generate its pages than for a request that bypasses the cache. Maybe in the HTTP query there’s a ‘?page=1’ kind of thing being injected.
Quaker in a Basement
Wonkiness observed on Betty’s post, not here. Using Opera browser.
donatellonerd
had considered commenting on BC’s post (which said 20 comments for many hours (from when i got up at 7 paris time till just now). now i appear to see everything — that is, not just it and not just this. Safari. hth
Bruce K in ATH-GR
1413 UTC on 24 July 2025, and for me, on Windows 11, Chrome and Opera are showing the bad behavior (sometimes reverting to proper behavior before returning to borked), while Firefox is behaving properly. On iOS, both Safari and Chrome are showing the bad behavior.
PaulB
When I first checked in a few hours ago, Betty’s was the most recent post visible, with only 20 comments in it. There were no posts, and no comments, later than about 2:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon (including the “Recent Comments” section in the sidebar). This was using an up-to-date Firefox on Windows 10. Refreshing, deleting everything and refreshing — nothing worked. The site was effectively frozen.
A few hours later, everything looks normal again (assuming this comment gets posted).
When I first saw the problem, I checked various social media accounts for the site and front-pagers and nobody was reporting any issues. I shrugged my shoulders and closed the browser, figuring that it would get fixed eventually.
PaulB
The “On the Road – arrieve – Antarctica Part 2” post is not available to me. The link the site displays is balloon-juice.com/?p=427023 and I get a “Page not Found” error.
That link doesn’t look like any of the other links on the site. For example, the next link on the site is balloon-juice.com/2025/07/24/trump-epstein-scandal-sweetheart-deal-2-0/.
PaulB
And now, with a refresh (as I was double-checking the Antarctica post), the site is now displaying at the top of the page, “Of Budgets And Bad Faith”, with 20 comments. The “Recent Comments” section in the sidebar is insisting that the most recent comment on the site is Matt McIrvin’s comment in that thread, posted at July 23, 2025 @ 2:41 pm), so I’m now back to where I was first thing this morning, which means that the site’s problems aren’t fixed.
PaulB
I should note that the only reason I’m able to post in this thread is that I left the window open after I had posted my first message in case I had anything else to offer, so even though I can’t get to this post from the main Balloon Juice page, the fact that the page is still in my browser cache means that it will accept my comments.
Other notes: I just checked Google Chrome and got the same truncated results, with nothing posted after 2:41 p.m. yesterday.
The Brave browser is showing me the truncated site, with nothing posted after 2:41 p.m. yesterday.
Microsoft Edge is showing me the full site, although the problem with the Antarctica post is showing up there, as well.
Basically, it’s an intermittent issue.