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DK6 Day 16: Comment loading issue improved [1]

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Date: 2026-04-30  

One of the most frustrating bugs over the past two weeks has been comments failing to load—often requiring multiple reloads to appear. Yesterday, we deployed a fix and have been tracking the results. The data is clear: the issue has been significantly improved.

The root problem was straightforward. Viafoura comments would throw an error if they didn’t load within 12 seconds—but that timer started when the story page first loaded. So if you did something crazy, like actually read the story before scrolling, the comments would time out.

The fix was to start the timer only once a reader reaches the comments section. The impact was immediate:

Comments loaded within 12s : 42% → 88%

: 42% → 88% Slow loading (longer than 12 seconds, but eventually loaded): 44% → 0.5%

(longer than 12 seconds, but eventually loaded): 44% → 0.5% True failure (widget never appeared): 3.7% → 0.1%

(widget never appeared): 3.7% → 0.1% Comments blocked by ad-blockers/browser security settings: 18.4% → 2.5%

At one point, only 42% of users could see comments without reloading the page. That was catastrophic.

Post-fix, only 0.5% of users are missing comments due to slow connections, and 2.5% are still blocked by ad blockers or browser security settings. Viafoura has asked major blocklist maintainers to whitelist their service, so now we’re waiting on those updates. If that stalls, we might have an alternate solution.

If you previously had trouble loading comments, please let us know in the comments if things are now working as expected. There is always a worry that people’s actual experiences aren’t being properly captured by the data, and we are in no hurry to declare victory.

You can follow the latest site updates on the Announcements page, linked under “Community” in the top navigation. If you missed it, there was a strong discussion about comment formatting here. The next major improvement—indented nesting—is coming within the next couple of weeks and will significantly improve readability.

The Current Work List

Comments not loading

Migrating groups created the few weeks before we switched to new platform

Investigating “Server Error” when voting on a poll

Investigating user log-outs (part 2)

Fixed this week

Prevent users from applying the tags #recommended, #rescued and #trending themselves (4/29/2026)

Replace stale “Top Staff Stories” widget with “Active Discussions” (4/29/2026)

Fix for users getting logged out when trying to comment, part 1 (4/29/2026)

Restore user’s site subscriber access automatically if their card is declined and then succeeds (4/29/2026)

Add missing redirect from https://www.dailykos.com/blog/main to https://www.dailykos.com/blogs/main (4/28/2026)

Add some more analytics to the comment error message and make it take longer to display (4/28/2026)

Viafoura comments not loading, initial fix (4/28/2026)

Replace the “phallic” cover photo with an alternate option (4/27/2026)

Restore timestamps to home page stories (4/27/2026)

Spam control (4/27/2026)

Images users have uploaded not showing up under “mine” (4/27/2026)

Daily Kos staff authors not showing up in the byline box in the story editor (4/27/2026)

Coming soon

Nested/indented comments

Update blockquote styling

Comment history page

Tags page

Tons of other minor fixes (our current list has almost 30 priority fixes on it)

Up to Viafoura

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/30/800030529/daily-kos/dk6-day-16-comment-loading-issue-improved/

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