Opera and IE8 comment rendering on Kotaku

It's just a hunch, but I suspect it's due to a bad ad causing the browser's renderer to stop. If I refresh the page enough times (I'm using Opera), sometimes comments re-appear, and in the tiny box at the bottom of the page in the screenshot there's an advert for something... so I guess I'm just being unlucky on the ad rotation the rest of the time?

It works for me in Firefox, and one big difference between my Opera and Firefox installs is that Firefox came with some ad-blocking plugin, so /none/ of the ads on the page even try to render in that browser.

I have the same problem with IE6

You could be right there Jake.

Still, It makes me realise just how much of the value of Kotaku is in the comments. It is nothing without.

Be nice to get it fixed though, three days on. Anyone out there listening?

I don't know about /nothing/, but yeah - I'm certainly spending a lot less time on the site in the last few days.

And reading fewer adverts *cough cough* ;-)

I'm having exactly the same problem in IE7, both in Vista86 and Vista64. But again, it works in FF and comments also work on Gizmondo and the other affiliated sites.

Strange and annoying.

Ok, for anyone who's interested, I've just manually updated Java to Version 6 Update 13 via http://www.java.com/en/ and Kotaku comments are now visable for me and therefore may work for you guys.

Ok, I thought updating Java did the trick, but I clearly just got lucky opening a couple of stories.

Most times I cannot see comments, but multiple refreshes will sometimes bring the comments back.

I can only assume that it is one of the ads that appears just above the comments that is screwing everything up, as no-ad = no-comments, ad-viewable = comments-viewable.

Ok, a further update. I installed an Ad-Blocker (IE7 Pro) and now all comments are visable all the time. Funnily enough, the comments pages load an awful lot quicker too.

That said, I personally believe it's important to support sites such as Kotaku that rely on ad revenue, so I'd much rather the tech guys here targeted the responsible ad (latest version of Flash 10 in use) and removed it.

Thanks Rotmm! Java didn't do it, but IE7pro did. And massively quicker too.

(the sad face that I put at the bottom is not for you, it is for whoever has not done anything about this problem in the last four days).

Guys. Four days. Lots of people affected. What's going on,eh?

I've been able to see comments (and ads) since a few hours ago, myself. Given that it sporadically suddenly worked for a few page loads at a time previously, I was just feeling lucky earlier on. So it's a nice thought that it's not just luck... ;-)

tom,

Seems to be all back to normal now, thanks.

Actually, no. I just opened the "Sony expects 15% increase in sales" story on Kotaku and, as before, the ad (and therefore also the comments) didn't load.

Ad-blocker back on, and will probably stay on from this point forward. Though I greatly believe in sites such as Kotaku being able to earn revenue from advertising, I have a greater belief in my ability to navigate web pages as they are meant to be seen, and this has been an ongoing problem that has had little to no investigation in a week.

Not really acceptable.

Hey Tom,

I still get the problem unfortunately, but it seems as if the chances of recieving a working ad is much higher than before so whatever you have done has helped the problem