Making Light:  Open thread 86 ::: June 29, 2007, 01:30 PM

996-998:  A SMOP would have Movable Type (or whatever) just omit the
number referring to a comment that is deleted or not yet approved.
There can be a placeholder if you want, but the lack of a placeholder
would be just fine by me.  Maybe group the placeholders: "[comments
#910-#915 are intentionally missing]" or something.  That way we would
save space if a firehose spammer dropped 58 turds that got flushed
immediately, but possibly one real comment got posted in the middle
of the bunch.

The only downside I see is that someone who wants to shout "Fire" in
comment 911 may find themselves being foolish in comment 916 because
there were skipped numbers in between.  But that could happen anyway
if there were competition for 911, so tough.  Maybe it's an upside if
it keeps people from playing inane comment numerology.

Well, there's another downside, which is that the top number doesn't
tell you how many comments there are.  Maybe on the front page mention
both how many comments, and the maximum comment number.

The comment labels (which are numbers, but could be otherwise encoded)
are really, really useful for cross-referencing, so they shouldn't go
changing based on approvals or deletions.