Stop comments from collapsing

[Dustin Strange]

Wondering if there is a setting to adjust to stop comments on an issue thread from collapsing, where you have to click 'view additional comments'.  Our users frequently overlook this because it blends in so well, looking for a way to stop the platform from collapsing them and just leave them all viewable without expanding.  Thanks! 

[Michael Thompson · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure when this option was introduced, but I'm using Jira Software 8.1.0....

1. Click on the Administration cog and click System.
2. Click the Advanced Settings button.
3. About 3/4 of the way down the page you will see a property key jira.comment.collapsing.minimum.hidden. If you set its value to 0 it will stop comment collapsing.

[Rob Calhoun]

The setting to prevent comments from collapsing does not work. (Tested with Jira Cloud as of 2022-10-28).

Setting:

Result (no change):

We migrated from an older on-prem version of Jira and this issue is everyone's number-one complaint.

The most common frustration is it results in a failed search:

• Search for a term using Jira search
• Jira returns a list of tickets
• Click on the ticket, search for term using browser search.
• Term not found (!!!) because it is hidden from view.

Everybody hates this. Just show us all the data we put into the ticket.

Regarding slow rendering: yes, Jira Cloud is very slow. That is a different problem and largely due to poor use of CSS. The decision to hide comments and (evidently) break the documented means of disabling this feature means that we wait for the slow load, then click "show n more comments", then wait again. The net result is that Cloud Jira slows users down more by hiding comments than it would by just showing them.

[Rob Calhoun]

Just realized this is the community forum, not the Jira Cloud bug reporter. The ticket for bug on this issue on the JIRACLOUD project is https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-44911 .

[Daniel Hong]

Doesn't work for us either. And it looks like that ticket is a request make the option per user setting, which we don't need. We just need the global option to work!

Edit: Ah, it was cloud environment for you. We are using the on-premise server version.

[Anatolii Kunaev]

It would be better if there were a parameter that shows the whole page, like

'https://url/TICKET-15?page=full'

It would significantly ease the life.

[Steven F Behnke]

Keep in mind that if you disable this and you find an issue with hundreds of comments, the issue will load SLOWLY AND you will incur excessive load on the server. The feature was introduced for a reason.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Steven F Behnke 

Would you please share where you learned about the impact of altering this setting?  I did not see that information in the Jira documentation.  Thank you.

[Steven F Behnke]

Through experience. In particular it was a ticket that had been imported from another piece of software, and that ticket had been used as a piece of documentation so it had grown quite a bit over a long period of time.

Jira Server renders the HTML serverside. If you turn collapsing off, the time spent on the server rendering the content is longer, additionally if/when the comments are loaded in dynamically that javascript operation will also be much slower.

It's quite trivial to test -- turn the comment collapsing off and then use a script to add many many comments.

[GM]

I understand the server load problem.  But, assuming the comments were expanded, the content will be loaded and cached for that user/browser.  In that situation, the user should have the option to keep the comments expanded until they leave the issue. 

I find the list gets collapsed each time I save an edit.  It's tedious to have to keep re-expanding and scrolling the list after each edit.  

I also understand caching and stale data and all the rest, and that this is a very particular nuisance, but wanted to vent because I have been dealing with the nuisance this quite a bit today...

[Daniel Hong]

Hey @Steven F Behnke 

Wouldn't that be a special case? It's unfortunate that a JIRA issue was being used as a documentation, instead of using a proper documentation tool... but I don't think most users would have that many comments per issue.

We average about 20 comments per issue and I don't think we ever reached 100 comments, may be 50 at most.

I mean, I don't mind that the collapsing behavior is turned on by default, because I don't have stats on what the common scenario is, but there should be option to turn it off for users like us.

[Steven F Behnke]

@Daniel Hong 

Woof talk about a blast from the PAST man. I think if I were to be succinct, I should at least say up front that we can talk about theory all we want but I work in the field and report back what the experience is with many users, what the documentation and tickets say, and what the source code is: I'm just another community member telling you what I think. :)

>> Steven: It's quite trivial to test -- turn the comment collapsing off and then use a script to add many many comments.

> Daniel: Wouldn't that be a special case?

 I think that Atlassian is trying to eek every ounce of performance out of the server-side performance of the tool, given that a Jira Administrator's configuration and a Jira User's usage of the tool poses many problems given Jira's data model. I think I can safely say this is Atlassian's primary focus given Jira Data Center Version 9's entire feature release is focused on vast performance increases by loading less things, specifically targeting the Activity Feed (comments therein) for instance. https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-9-0-x-release-notes-1142227613.html

If you are focused on Jira Cloud, the right answer is to vote, comment, and watch the ticket https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-44911 User-option to disable auto collapse on comments

@GM I missed your post, sorry. However, I just wanted to note that comments are not cached in the browser. 

[Dwight Holman]

For all the Atlassian people out there(?) the discussion here and in other tickets suggests your users do want to search within a specific issue to find comments. This is something I have done many times.

Admins for Jira Server have been able to provide this for their users by disabling the comment collapse feature. Then users can use Ctrl-F - like they do for any-other-web-app/page. (hint: this is probably the most intuitive search experience). We've used this approach on Jira Server for many years and have not had problems with page load times despite issues with many comments.

Could you implement a feature to search ALL description/comment text WITHIN the current issue? Perhaps Quick Search should have a "in this issue" feature?

If Jira Cloud infrastructure cannot handle this, perhaps your strategy to kill Jira Server is the problem? (our team is too small for Jira DC given the current pricing).