Rosangel Valenti's dashboard

I now see (on going into the post once again) that adding the test post has had the effect of restoring all of the comments, via the "next" tab. I actually opened and closed the comments on this post twice - the first time the comments "hung" at 100, and nothing appeared on the next page. Second time around I added the "test" post at the end. This restored everything.

By the way, I've just done an experiment on one of our older posts which could provide a clue to the problem:
http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennis...

It's our rule to manage all older posts by closing the comments. I tried opening the comments up (which basically republishes the post). The comments all appeared. I was able to make a test post at the end. I've now closed them again - the first 100 still appear on opening the post, but not the rest. Obviously we don't have time to republish every post in our archives in this way (plus it wouldn't solve the whole issue), and plenty of comments are still missing.

Thanks for your attention to this problem.

Colleen:
Yes, the comments can still be viewed from inside the account, so they still exist in the database.
Here is a sample post from 2008 where this issue occurs:
http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennis...

There should be 261 comments on this page according to the index page, but none appear. Previously they all appeared without any problem. If I click on "Next" and then "Previous" via the front end I can get the first 100 comments, but the rest are inaccessible. Clearly we want all the comments restored.

There are literally hundreds of posts where this same problem is occurring, some with far more comments than this post.

From information that we've seen on other blogs hosted by Typepad, this issue has been raised before by some of your customers, as far back as October of 2008. It's staggering that it's still going on now. Also unbelievable that your company dared to roll out the new software not only without warning or consultation, but still containing four-month-old problems.

I think if you check some of the older blogs, you will find that all of the comments are missing. The somewhat unreliable current commenting environment is a separate issue.

Andy, like Andrew I am heavily involved with TennisWorld in terms of posting and moderation. The changes are simply unworkable for a community like ours - I am appalled that a company like yours would expect a highly-active blog like ours to work with the radically changed format that has been imposed upon us. The changes are guaranteed to cripple the way we interact, and are already degrading people's experience of the blog, at which the comments section is a very important element. We have posts going up once or more daily, and a lot of like-minded people rely on the site for tennis commentary and an active exchange of opinions. Sometimes this all happens in a very short space of time.

With the maximum number of posts per page set at 50, a 1000-post conversation (which can at peak times be achieved within a couple of hours) requires the reader/follower to click on a "next" link 20 times - it's both a huge time-waster, and makes the conversation extremely difficult to follow, especially for anyone who needs to jump back and forth to relate a question to an answer, for example. The original straight-line conversational format was simple and workable. The changed format is no easier for a moderator to deal with than a regular poster, and again wastes valuable time in usage.

So, I fully second Andrew's point that the best solution for us would be no limit on the number of comments per post, and the second-best solution would be a 1000-2000 word limit.

I also think that Andrew is modestly underestimating our readership. TennisWorld is one of the most widely-read and used tennis blogs in the world; its readers and contributors range from tennis fans through many tennis professionals and journalists as well. Everyone associated with running the blog takes great pride in the way it has developed over time, and considers this new inappropriate format as a critical issue requiring urgent resolution.