Kinja strikes again.

"404 - User No Longer Available" (toni-cipriani)
05/29/2018 at 10:04 • Filed to: Kinjahelp

Uncovering the mystery of the dead Comment Reply button.

Also, usually when this happens, the top right Profile and Notification icons are gone, all you see is a black bar. Usually this only happens on FP, but now it has spread to Oppo.

DISCUSSION (10)

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:09

Yeah. I have also had an issue with Kinja randomly logging me out when I click on an article then go back to the main oppo page. Super frustrating.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:20

I’m intrigued by that keyboard.

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:26

On mobile, for some reason if I turn my phone from portrait to landscape it works.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:28

something tells me univision doesnt have the money to keep kinja running anymore

Urambo Tauro > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:29

As near as I can figure, the dead reply button seems to be tied to numerical web address paths.

Your post, “kinja-strikes-again-1826384677”, has a working reply button because of the “kinja-strikes-again-” part. But if you’re reading this from clicking on a reply notification, or if you click on this comment’s timestamp, you’re visiting the post through a strictly numerical address path (1826385430), and the reply button is dead.

Comment permalinks used to have part of their text content in the address path, but that feature was removed a year or two ago. Someone starred one of my old comments from 2015 yesterday, and I took that opportunity to test the reply button. It works!

Interestingly, if I visit a page through a numerical comment permalink, the reply button is dead... BUT if I scroll up into the main post, the web address changes to the main post’s address path (like Infinite Scroll does), and I can use the reply button again when I scroll back down, without having to reload the page.

This seems to also be affecting embedded/inset links. Those link-boxes in main posts are visible from the main post, but they disappear when visiting a page through a comment permalink. Unfortunately, scrolling up to the main post to trigger the address change won’t reveal the links the same way that it reactivates the reply buttons.

Also, I’ve seen a couple of posts that have no title or text content, which could not be replied to at all...

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

404 - User No Longer Available > Urambo Tauro
05/29/2018 at 10:32

Yeah, you’re on to something. The replies seem to be hidden layers triggered by HTML hashtags.

My other theory is that the script errors are due to them putting some of the functional JS on ad servers, and the scripts gets blocked, throwing errors. Maybe a sly way of getting at ad blockers by simply breaking the damn page.

Urambo Tauro > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:36

I would like to think that this could all be fixed by Kinja getting back to putting that “text preview” in comment address paths, and getting rid of Infinite Scroll.

404 - User No Longer Available > Urambo Tauro
05/29/2018 at 10:39

Funny you mention Infinite Scroll... because that’s precisely what showed up when I experimented turning off the ad-blocker.

I guess they are going with boosting the metric about how long does someone stay on a page. Very commonly used in China, which is why they keep opening new links in new tabs, thus users “stay” on a page.

Urambo Tauro > 404 - User No Longer Available
05/29/2018 at 10:56

It should be fixed by tomorrow or Thursday

-Update from Ernie @ Kinja

For Sweden > Urambo Tauro
05/29/2018 at 11:25

Ernie please hire this man