Favorite counting bug?

September 25, 2007 4:57 PM

I think there may be a bug in the "# favorites" accounting code.

I posted an answer to an AskMe thread, and someone tagged it as a favorite. Then the mods deleted it (wrongly, IMHO, but I'm not posting to complain about that). My "favorited by others" total was 713 before it was deleted, and as I post this it's still 713, even though that last favorited comment no longer appears in the listing.

Probably that's happened to other comments of mine, too, and it means that if I were to dump the full list of my comments which have been favorited by others and count them, it wouldn't total up to 713. (Not that I'm inclined to do so, I'm just saying.)

Is this a bug or is it a feature? Or is it a "doesn't matter"?

posted by Steven C. Den Beste to Bugs at 4:57 PM (21 comments total)

It's the key to the holy grail of Metafilter prestige: an account with 100 favorites, 0 comments, and 0 posts.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 5:09 PM on September 25, 2007 [4 favorites]

Probably fairest to call it a bug. It may or may not be easy to incorporate a check for deletion when tallying comment numbers; I think this has been brought up a couple times before, but since it's more of a margin-of-error thing on a minor metric than a real site-usability issue, it's not super high priority.

(wrongly, IMHO, but I'm not posting to complain about that)

The traditional approach to not complaining about something is to not bring it up. Just an FYI.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:10 PM on September 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Deleted comments that were favorited still count in your total. Deleted threads that were favorited don't.
posted by Poolio at 5:20 PM on September 25, 2007

It's the key to the holy grail of Metafilter prestige: an account with 100 favorites, 0 comments, and 0 posts.

I think you'd have to be pretty subversive to pull that off. And I think long before you reached that goal you'd get smashed by the banhammer.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:26 PM on September 25, 2007

I think you'd have to be pretty subversive to pull that off. And I think long before you reached that goal you'd get smashed by the banhammer.

True. There are strategies, though, that one might use. For the last push, I'm thinking that if one could get a super-helpful comment put on the sidebar that included several links to a resource under one's control, one could rack up a bunch of favorites before redirecting all the linked pages to lemon party. That would be the end of the account, but that last comment could easily get you 60+ favorites.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 5:35 PM on September 25, 2007

Great, we've reached the trifecta of three favorite-naval-gazing metatalk threads in one day. I can't be the only one that misses the metafilter before this distracting popularity contest bullshit.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:42 PM on September 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

Very clever approach to complaining about your crap being deleted. Bravo! I look forward to more complaints in the guise of earnest bug tickets.
posted by xmutex at 5:59 PM on September 25, 2007

Clearly you missed the thread on praeteritio, cortex.
posted by ikkyu2 at 6:00 PM on September 25, 2007

The SQL to do this correctly is trivial, and (given that the correct indices exist) inexpensive in terms of efficiency.
posted by orthogonality at 6:11 PM on September 25, 2007

Don't give me any paralipsis, ikk.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:19 PM on September 25, 2007

I had a comment deleted with 4 favorites. That was confusing.
posted by smackfu at 6:34 PM on September 25, 2007

I don't know orthogonality, it might require one of those tricky "joins". Ooo.
posted by smackfu at 6:35 PM on September 25, 2007

This has been brought up here many times before, hasn't it? Hmm, how to check? I know, how about a search for "favorites" and "deleted" in MetaTalk? It's a long shot, but it just might work! Ah, there it is - the 8th result: Favorites Miscounting Bug, from just last month.

Funny, that one was a veiled complaint about a comment deletion, too.
posted by mediareport at 6:51 PM on September 25, 2007

You know what stops duplicate bugs from being reported? Fixing the bugs.
posted by smackfu at 6:52 PM on September 25, 2007

The Favorites Count that is seen is not the true Favorites Count.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 7:05 PM on September 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah, this is something pb can fix when he comes back in a couple weeks. I think we misread the bug report from last month.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:06 PM on September 25, 2007

I feel approximately 38% vindicated, yo.
posted by The Confessor at 7:23 PM on September 25, 2007

Great, we've reached the trifecta of three favorite-naval-gazing metatalk threads in one day.

Is naval gazing related to trainspotting?
posted by nasreddin at 8:05 PM on September 25, 2007

Is naval gazing related to trainspotting?

Worse things happen at sea.
posted by Wolof at 10:41 PM on September 25, 2007

SELECT count(*)
  FROM favourites
  WHERE user_id = 15556
     AND NOT comment_id IN (SELECT comment_id FROM bannable_offenses WHERE is_deleted = 1)

No join needed.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:34 AM on September 26, 2007

cannot favorite, mods will ban me. cannot favorite, mods will band me. cannot favorite, mods will ban me. cannot favorite, mods will ban me...
posted by Tennyson D'San at 1:04 PM on September 26, 2007