My hunch here is that very few people see even aware of this Mastodon feature

So, a poll: prior to reading this thread, did you know that Mastodon by default will only show you public replies to a post if those replies have already been fetched into your server somehow?

(This only affects you when you view a post that originated on a server other than your home server - if the original post author is on the same server as you then you'll see all of the replies)

@sean @simon

sometimes when i view a post, no replies at all show up for a few seconds and there's a progress bar at the top of the page

i thought the replies were getting fetched from the server of author of the top post

then it seems like all those replies are cached on my server, because if i return to that post later, replies show up instantly

but those replies seem static, they don't update dynamically, and if i return to the post a minute later, the replies haven't changed

sometimes it takes a browser refresh, or even a shift-refresh to get new comments

exactly how and when does my server get updated with new replies?

@simon @sean

seems like 3 would never happen because someone else on my server can't favorite or boost or reply to a reply that doesn't exist on our server??