Help! I don't want to paginate!

the pagination is so disappointing if you are on a site with lots of traffic.
please set the upper limit per page to 1000, as it is it is just stupid, aggravating and unworkable. you should be ashamed for making such a user unfriendly piece of ware

Was the goal to achieve maximum user frustration? If so, mission accomplished!!

You should roll back the upgrade immediately and rethink your interface. It needs work.

Andy, 50 is a ludicrously low number for some sites.
I am with Sherlock, roll back the upgrade and rethink the interface. You have created ugliness and unfriendliness.
Is that what you wanted? Really?
1000 is a good number.

Andy, thanks so much for your replies. It really is very much appreciated.

As for me, I am not the owner, so I can't speak as such. But as a frequent poster, I do know that prior to this upgrade being applied, we had no pagination. Yes, loading time was a very minor issue as we approached the thousand post range, but compared to the difficulties we've encountered in our brief exposure to the current pagination setup, I'm almost certain it would be much, much preferred to the pagination, without a doubt.

a few things:

- pagination causes a lack of continuity in the comments section, specially if there's an on going discussion.
- navigating from pages doesn't automatically reduce the reloading time on refreshing the page. In fact, I'm having to refresh it a couple more times just to see what I or others have posted.
- there's no way to show my email id to other posters, if I want to.
- makes it harder for one to, for example, search for a word/phrase related to a discussion. There's no way but to go through each page looking for a response, and with more than 800/1000 comments a day, this is really tedious.

Loading up a page was an issue only when the no. of comments approached a 1000.
We could work around it by creating a new blog entry. 50 comments a page is simply not enough. Please help us look into this.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the response. I was the original poser of the question, and I'm one of a small group of people given moderation and posting rights at the site.

Yes, either of those two options would be preferable to the recent change in the functioning of the site.

There are several blogs maintained by Tennis.com using TypePad software. The most popular blog, Peter Bodo's TennisWorld, is the electronic meeting place for a large community of tennis enthusiasts across the world. Upwards of 50 people regularly add comments to the blog, and possibly 200 or more are occasional posters.

During tennis tournaments, a very popular activity on the site is match commentating - posters may exchange many hundreds of posts in an important match. For the recent Wimbledon and Australian Open finals, nearly 3000 posts were recorded on a single match. Some of these posts are short, but it's possible to keep a conversation going, and posters may duck in and out.

The pagination function as implemented will make it impossible to maintain this activity. It also makes it harder to moderate, and to search for comments by a particular poster.

As an aside, it also now appears that posters can't display their email address as they could before. But that's not the main point of the request for help.

The comments features allow Urls to be posted, but not comments. Over time, we've found that page loading runs at acceptable speeds for up to 1000-1500 page comments. When this point is reached, a continuation thread is usually added.

So, either restoring the set up to where it was before (likely ideal, particularly if the email issue was resolved by the restored setup) or resetting the comments maximum to 1000 or 2000 comments would be a huge help. We very much appreciate the assistance.

Andrew

BTW, I understand that in some circumstances (for example if photos or images are in the comments) that pagination may be an attractive option. But in our case it genuinely will have a chilling effect on our community. Again, thanks for working constructively with us on this.

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.

Hello,

Yes, unlike other forums, where pagination actually helps by decreasing the loading times, here at tennisworld, pagination is not at all being helpful. Please do not think that this is a typical reaction to any 'change'.

If you noticed, the structure of the old setup was such that it didn't allow any kind of reply/quote loops there by making each post simple and compact and whereever necessary a poster would manually quote a part of the post. Apart from that extension pages are also added whenever the post counts touches a certain number and where we start to hate the loading times.

I seriously don't understand the reason behind the change and if it is purely to save the bandwidth usage, then I am sorry to say that I do not agree with your method to reduce it.

regards.

Be sage, do not page.

What's nifty? Definitely not fifty.

Pagination hinders the communication on this board. It worked well before, with a new comment section added if the current page started loading slowly. The new system won't work well during high use times, when live tennis is occurring. Thanks for your attention to this.

Andy - I am the General Manager of TENNIS.com. We have been a long term, faithful typepad client. Not only does this frustrate the end-users and participants to no end, it also creates undo challenges on the volunteer moderation team we respect and appreciate so much.

I fully support the views of our tennis faithful, as posted here, and also understand that there are some tradeoffs in terms of pageload with no pagination. However, we are willing to accept those tradeoffs.

We appreciate your prompt ability to address these issues and provide a solution that is workable.

Sincerely,

Dominic Schmitt
General Manager, TENNIS.com

I'm also weighing in on the comments limit function. Limiting the pagination to 50 comments for 'our own good' is actually threatening to seriously hinder the community's ability to interact. It’s almost impossible to review topics and links and then have a conversation about them. Once you've hit page down 10 times, there's no way you can go back to locate what piqued your interest.

We're losing our ability to carry threads of conversations throughout the day. The TW blog spoken about has been incredibly successful at fostering a community of tennis enthusiasts (and yes, here are actually quite a few of us throughout the world!). Without the ability to quickly scroll / review comments, it’s problematic to carry on a conversation with other across the world in differing time zones.

PLEASE see about either removing the pagination 'feature' entirely, or at least allowing the comments limit to be set to 1000 or 1200.

Thanks for your assistance.

JB

Andrew: with all due respect, your company should know 50 comments per page is just unacceptably too little for certain blogs/uses. I don't know how it came to anybody's mind that could ever be ok. You should be able to have them all together in one page for multiple reasons (searches, save a thread... I just cannot believe your company does not know!) At least give the option to continue using the previous version...

just wanted to say I am still disappointed.
at least the big boys are involved now.

Andy: 50 is NO GOOD and no, this does not mean your company has satisfactorily answered our question.

Weighing in on this as an end-user - the pagination is making the normal free-ranging conversation on Tennis World very difficult. Please consider reverting to the old system or at least setting the comments per page limit to 1000/1200.

(Another small change I'm finding difficult is that I can no longer show my email address when I comment - I don't have a URL and I would really like to do this...any suggestions?)

Thank you for your time and attention!

It's been said, but it bears repeating: this system just does not work for TW and its community. Please remove pagination or up the limit to 1000 or more.

Loading times have never been a big problem because the site's excellent administrators put up extension threads when the original ones are overloaded, and having the un-paginated format means that we can have continuous and free-flowing dialogue. It just doesn't work for TW.

Obviously this system will work for some blogs, but the users here are telling you it does not work for them. Please listen! Thanks.

Hello Andrew,

Parkp67 here, Thank you very much for your comments and actively trying to assist the TW message Board. I am a fairly new poster to the board...but I have been a lurker for quite some time, and even for the lurkers this pagination is not ideal and quite disruptive for ease of reading.
Thank you once again for any assistance you can render!!

I find this change totally ruins the good work of the excellent and dedicated writers on the blog, as it appears from now on any posts to the site cannot receive the level of discussion by the readership that they deserve. At least now without difficulty.
The blogs on Tennis.com have relied on reader interaction to set them apart from most other online tennis commentary and to make the site a unique and enjoyable experience.
At the moment, what we have is a mess.

The alterations are off putting and confusing, I can honestly see no beneficial aspects to what has become of TypePad as well as finding no fault with the old system. The lack of navigation in the new system is pretty mindboggling.

As I type this Peter Bodo is trying to lead a Q&A session with his readers, a fantastic thing for him to take time out and do. But the new pagination scheme is so far from ideal just attempting to keep up with everything is a headache, without having to keep tabs on and answer individual questions as Pete is doing.

Like everyone else I respectfully request that Tennis.com has its individual needs considered.
If the old format cannot be brought back, then the ability increase the page size to at least 1,000 comments is the only other acceptable option.

I am so proud of our TW crew. Respectful but forceful
that is the only good thing to come out of this mess.

I'm finding the new system very frustrating. While I understand that pagination can help to reduce loading time, I've actually found it has taken me far longer to click through each page to find the latest comment. Obviously in a blog that regularly has over 800 comments, turning page by page 40 times is utterly ludicrous.The process has been so irritating, that I've given up and will not be participating in the blog today.

I understand that reversing the order of comments is an available option. And while it may to some extent deal with this first problem I've encountered it remains unsatisfactory for a host of reasons already identified by other users.

Typepad is terribly remiss in introducing this system without, at the very least, providing a means a tool bar showing the number of pages and allowing users to skip to the first or last page. This is an extremely basic function made commonly available by other software providers.

I can not speak for the needs other blogs, but I am sure that this 'update' is in no way an improvement for TennisWorld. This leads me to ask 'How did typepad decide what to include their update?'

From what I gather, TW was not sufficiently consulted, or even informed about these changes. If this process had been undertaken, these problems would have been explored and resolved before the ensuing chaos, and multitude of complaints.

It is a little late to ask about our needs and goals now. This type of inquiry should have been made before the update had been undertaken, so that 'actual' improvements could have been made.

Nine months on, has anything been done about this?

Ok so nine days ago you upped the limit to 100.

Such a shame you didn't go with users suggestions for a limit of 1000 while the system was being changed? unamused