Until today, comments added to posts have been displayed with a sequential number starting at 1.
People referring back to that comment have coded, e.g. @7 to refer back to comment number 7.
This has led to problems when comments have been deleted for whatever reason.
From today onwards, comments will display a largely unique three-digit number which will never change. I say “largely unique” because, obviously, comment numbers will rollover back to “000” after “999′. The chances of that ever being a problem, I think, it’s fair to say, are very slim.
Hmm. This makes a bit more cognitive work… I often scroll up to remind myself of a clue/solution (most frequently because some people insist on writing things like “I struggled with 10a” without stating the solution, as if we’d all memorised the entire grid) and now we have to remember a three-digit number instead of a one- or two-digit one in order to scroll back down to where we left off. Ditto when revisiting the page later to read newer comments. Admittedly it does look so far as if the numbers, which are at least sequential, are sufficiently dense that one can just remember 85 instead of the actual 485 or whatever, so I suppose we’ll get used to doing that.
Also, I liked being able to see at a glance how many comments in total there are (though I can’t quite put my finger upon why), whereas now we’ll have to scroll to the top of the comments list in order to see that.
The original problem wasn’t so much that a comment gets deleted and later comments before the deletionemd up referring to a non-existent comment; it was rather that the numbers “shunted up” after the deletion meaning that the ID of the deleted comment was reassigned to the subsequent comment, leading to confusion. Wouldn’t an alternative simply be to replace the unwanted comment with a stock phrase such as “comment removed”, rather than delete it?
I agree with everything in comment #462 above.
*end up referring
Looking at https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/10/12/independent-on-sunday-1859-by-filbert/, after just seven comments the numbers have gone from 388 to 458, so they’re not as dense as it first seemed. So we really will have to memorise three-digit numbers, especially on the Guardian posts where there are dozens of comments.
Also, this appears to have been applied retrospectively, making the comments in all of the tens of thousands of previous posts very hard to make sense of, when doing a older puzzle (many of us do, and especially beginners who are going through the QC or Quiptic archives) and when referring to “site lore”, i.e. classic comments usually made by the most recognised commenters on here, which very often cite earlier comments or wider discussions, all of whose ref numbers no longer mean anything.
The expression “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind.
It’s clever and logical but somewhat overlooks the user experience. Crosswords can be hard enough as it is without turning commenting into a Krypton Factor mental agility round. I’m fine with the occasional gap, I quite like it even. As AP says @465, if we need a solution, “comment deleted” would be a more elegant one.
Oh dear, looks like you cant’ win, Ken.
I agree with AP @462
Just to echo #465, the retrospective application of this has made things worse. I’m grateful to you for attempting to fix the deleted comments problem, but this solution, unless it is tweaked so as to apply only to future puzzles, isn’t appropriate.
@471
Ain’t that the truth!
Everyone else, it was broke, it needed fixing.
Don’t worry, we’ll soon get use to it.
I posted here without realising that there had already been a discussion about this in the Site Feedback channel, although nothing said there changes my opinion of it all, except for the issue of holding a post for moderation, for which I think the ideal solution would be to “reserve” the comment number.
Scrolling thought the wider comments on that page, https://www.fifteensquared.net/site-feedback/ , it is clear that there (and on the couple of other semi-permanent ones) that the same 3-digit number will get reassigned with an undesirably high probability; and also that when reading the “middle” comments in the list one gets completely lost, having no idea where one is in the list. This won’t be a problem on the daily posts, however, since there aren’t 1000 new comments per day across the site.
kenmac@474, sure, but the fix is almost as problematic as the original problem.
It doesn’t strike me as being better but I guess we’ll see. Thanks for the explanation.
Sorry Ken. I didn’t realise people had highlighted an issue before. I see you edited my post to include a number. If you could do that every time it eould really help, new system or otherwise! 😃 Thanks for your efforts.
Ken @474 I am sure you’re right and we will get used to it, but meanwhile, the words sledgehammer and nut do occur to me. Sorry.
@486 – er, that’ll be a “NO” on my part.
😀
kenmac @ 488
I don’t know how much programming logic you can build into this site, but if you make the number
(number of messages with IDs less than this one in this post) + 1
Where ID = your new global sequential number.
..you will get the desired sequence. Fairly straightforward in SQL, let me know if you think this is do-able, but need help.
Another one agreeing with AP@462. The new system feels awkward (especially the non-sequential numbering) – I’ve never seen this system anywhere; and the alternative approach suggested by AP sounds reasonable to me.
Having said that, I’m very grateful to creators of this site for all their efforts in maintaining it, and I guess we’ll just have to live with whatever they think is best…
Really don’t like this change – it’s not as if comments get removed that often – i’ve never seen it as a problem.
In the Guardian comments under each crossword they just put “this comment was removed because it didn’t meet our standards/ rules ” or some such.
Why not, as AP earlier commented, just do the same.
Thanks kenmac. To echo AP@465, the application of the new numbering to the archive is really problematic. I spent years working through some of the archive, and still am, and there were constant references by number to previous comments that will now be impossible to navigate. Would it be possible to apply the new system only from the present day, and restore the original numbering to the archive? I’m sure it will work well going forward