Automattic
Missing comment in thread
Quick summary
I created a post (https://epiph.yt/en/blog/2025/optimize-surge-configuration-for-activitypub/) where @obenland mentioned me afterwards. I answered via my blog. Another user answered the post of @obenland, too, and @obenland answered again – both answers were also published on my blog.
When @pfefferle answered on my first answer (https://mastodon.social/@pfefferle/114474115709842979?kjy=spring), my blog got no notification (this is also true for the next answer after that).
While I can see a POST request to my inbox 2 seconds later, I unfortunately cannot be sure that it’s really the data that should be responsible for creating a new comment afterwards:
[08/May/2025:20:33:06 +0000] "POST /en/wp-json/activitypub/1.0/actors/0/inbox HTTP/1.1" 202 12 "-" "Mastodon/4.4.0-nightly.2025-05-07-security (http.rb/5.2.0; +https://mastodon.social/)"
Steps to reproduce
See above.
- Post published ✅
- First mention from the Fediverse incoming as comment ✅
- First answer to first mention from within WordPress federated. ✅
- Second answer to the first mention from Fediverse incoming as comment. ✅
- First mention from the Fediverse to the first answer to the first mention not incoming. ❌
- First asnwer to the first mention from the Fediverse to the first answer to the first mention not incoming. ❌
Site owner impact
Fewer than 20% of the total website/platform users
Severity
Minor
What other impact(s) does this issue have?
No revenue impact
If a workaround is available, please outline it here.
No response
Yea, that is a tricky one :)
We currently provide comment threads and comment contexts, but do not parse them for incoming reactions yet :(
Oh, but maybe this is a bit different in your case!?! Maybe the multilang/query param comes into play here.
I will run some tests on monday!
@MatzeKitt can you maybe provide me the IDs of all the replies you mentioned above?
Whoopsy 😬
Is it the source_id field in the commentmeta table or something different? My own comment doesn’t have that.
- First mention: https://mastodon.social/users/obenland/statuses/114473049916207240
- Second answer to this mention: https://mastodon.social/@NickBohle/114473260458061909
The context endpoint doesn't contain @pfefferle's response either.
So it looks like the activity came in and for one reason or another it didn't end up creating the comment out of it. It's a bit unfortunate that we keep receiving issues like that (#1960) and it's just really hard to debug after the fact.
I don't know if a debug "plugin" would helpful to keep logs on future comment POSTs to see what happens, but this is something we could try: https://gist.github.com/obenland/58f04709da1b60dfe56bfa192b929f50
@MatzeKitt and maybe what url_to_postid( 'https://epiph.yt/en/?p=1161' ) returns.
We have some more reports about missing comments, so that is what I'm try to figure out :)
But I assume it is not (only) your setup!
I now also added @obenland’s plugin as MU plugin. So if you want to test it on my site, feel free to comment again. 🙂
I would assume that you also use Antispam Bee?
Do you auto-delete honeypot comments?
@MatzeKitt any new insights on this? Not sure there's something actionable for us to sink our teeth in here.
It didn’t occur again. But to be fair, I didn’t have a threaded comment since then.
Let's close this for now, if you don't mind. Please feel free to reopen when there are steps to reproduce or more pointers to investigate.