I don't think that works.

It will show the dead, but not their children.

Hmm. Could you point out an example? If something related to the showdead mechanics have changed, that would be quite interesting.

For me, it’s always reliably shown everything.

Sure.

Here's a recent comment from the user dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271566

And here's his page, where the comment can't be seen: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

---

And here's another comment, also from dang, where he talked about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264605

> this how HN's software works these days. We didn't do anything specific to the thread; it's just that users flagged the root comment.

That’s interesting. I suspect it’s special cased for admin accounts specifically.

The reason might be that users often pick fights with mods. Dan’s comment page might be overwhelmed by such threads if left unchecked. pg once noted that pg’s own account was highly watched relative to other accounts, so maybe users were following Dan around and adding fuel to the very fires he was trying to put out.

The reason I say that is because I can’t find any examples of this phenomenon except his account. Do you know of any? E.g. this thread does show up on the flagged user’s profile page, contrary to what others were saying. It’s right below this one for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=breck&next=34266186#...

It also seems to show up on everyone else’s page: mine, tptacek’s, etc.

Cheers for pointing that out. Stuff like this is fascinating, and we rarely get the chance to nerd out about it.

EDIT: interestingly, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34265016 does show up.

Simple explanation, I'm afraid: I was dumb.

There are no exceptions (...at least, none that I'm currently aware of). Dang's "missing comment" actually is on his page, just not where I was looking.

The comment was new, but it was a descendant of one of dang's older comments, so it appears further back in his profile than where I looked.

It’s a surprisingly easy mistake to make. I thought it might be that, so I triple checked, and still missed it. So you’re not alone.

One time many years ago, I almost emailed a bug report claiming the very same thing. Luckily I noticed right beforehand.

It speaks to Dan’s dedication that he did so much for the site in a single day that both of us missed his comment buried in the avalanche. :)

In fairness, the discussion was a little confusing, since it was combining a few different topics (showdead, OPs thread, flagging, and admin’ing) so a mixup probably isn’t too surprising.

HN is completely fascinating, and I appreciated the analytical eye you were bringing to it. If you keep doing that, you’ll notice a ton of surprising little details over time. Minimaxir tried to document them in “undocumented features of hacker news” and the list is still far from complete. Plus it’s cool that the site is ever-evolving.

One of my favorite new features is that if you go to an old submission, e.g, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 (or thereabouts), all the users’ names will show up in green if they were a new account at the time. I.e. it preserves the historical fact of someone being a new user in a given comment thread.

It’s such a small detail, yet there are quite literally thousands of such small details that all add up to something wonderful.

Regardless, have a good weekend, and cheers for the chat.

> Simple explanation, I'm afraid: I was dumb.

Probably 20% of the time I send an angry email to dang (generally about censorship), it turns out I did something dumb and read the site wrong.

I double check and triple check, but still often make silly mistakes. (He is always gracious about my mistakes).