Hundred Page Limit

The newly introduced 100-page limit on threads seems to have had some unintended consequences. If you do a search and the result is greater than 100 pages, you cannot see the end of the search.

This applies to lists of Groups, Topics, Members, etc.

For groups, where you are sorting by number of members, it means you cannot display any groups with fewer than 23 members.

For topics, you can see back beyond last October.

The 100 page limit affects the tournament lists as well.

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/completed_tournaments.html?page=101

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/current_tournaments.html?page=101

and the 100 page limit affects the photo lists.

the simple fact is, it's really painful on the server :) google something... you can't just infinitely "next" through the results (google gives me 92 pages for "chess"). a better approach is to try and find out what you are actually trying to find/do and we can attempt to solve that without intensive pagination... so, what is it? :D

In the case of ordered lists, I don't click on NEXT 100 times. I click NEXT once to go from the original URL e.g. http://www.chess.com/chessgroups to one with a page reference http://www.chess.com/chessgroups?page=2. Then I modify the URL to jump straight to page 50 say (http://www.chess.com/chessgroups?page=50). The groupsize shown is 54.

I repeat this a few times ... http://www.chess.com/chessgroups?page=100. Groupsize is 23. With the current restriction, it is not possible to see the information at the end of the list.

  If the time-consuming part of the operation is the server generating and storing the 100+ pages initially, then fair enough. But, if the expense is someone performing 100 or more subsequent NEXT clicks, then I reckon it is not used like that.

The most obvious solution is to provide a 10-page window instead of a 100-page limit, by providing a STARTPOINT and an ENDPOINT e.g. FROMPAGE=150 TOPAGE=160. It is a general mechanism that would allow viewing of the complete list. Plus, it should reduce the load on the server if the maximum number of pages at a time is set appropriately.

To help people find things more easily, more powerful search facilities would be useful. e.g. for topics, provide a search restricted to TITLE only.

Better search capabilities are definitely the ideal solution in most cases, but not so much for a thread that's meant to be read from front to back.

Nor for browsing for non-specific threads older than a few months.

That's curious: threads which exceed 100 pages are now listable (again) beyond the 100th page but search queries (e.g. the list of all groups) in which the results would exceed 100 pages still get truncated at the 100th page.

This is good -- there's a perfectly valid reason for extensive pagination in a thread, but if your search result isn't in the first 100 pages then you need to refine your search terms.  More robust sorting capabilities for complete lists (like the list of groups) would probably also help.

Indeed. The list of groups can only be sorted by

• # of Members i.e. in descending order
• Date Formed
• Alphabetical

so there's no easy method of listing the smallest (weakest) groups.

Other keys (e.g. average rating) would be handy.

I think you're conflating two issues. If you could list the groups by # of members ascending, the page limit wouldn't affect the ability to list the smallest groups (then you'd know who to pick on).

As TheGrobe says, if you're search doesn't return the desired result in the top 100 pages, you're not searching for the right thing. I know it's not your fault because your search options are limited. But I think you're complaining to chess.com about the wrong thing, essentially confusing the issue of the 100 page limit with the limited search issue.

I'm attempting to draw attention to both issues separately, but I'm also exploring workarounds.

I'm agreeing with theGrobe that if an extra search key were added to Search Groups, it would provide a workaround to the 100-page problem for Groups - at least until the number of groups exceeds 4,000.

However, that would still leave the problem of how to fully list Topics, Members, Tournaments and Photos. A piecemeal solution of adding keys would help, but I would prefer a generic solution such as an N-page view.

A workaround to access old topics is to search using Google.

I think chess.com has asked google to not cache the site...?

I've noticed a change in my google search results over time:

At first I could get old, deleted pages.

Then I found that pages that had been around awhile and then were deleted were not being cached.

Why would chess.com asked google not to cache the site?

Maybe they haven't and I'm just wrong.

It's possible they are marking some pages do not archive, but I really can't say as I have little expertise here.

For groups, where you are sorting by number of members, it means you cannot display any groups with fewer than 44 members.

For topics, you cannot see back beyond 2½  months ago.

It would probably save a lot of arguments if this limit were reduced to ONE page.

But what if the topic become very interesting...

You would still have TWENTY posts to develop any topic! TWENTY POSTS!! Twenty!!!