This post is the result of someone asking me if the number of comments listed on the comments page in the WordPress admin could list more than the default 20. I wasn’t sure so I looked around in the settings and discovered that, like the number of lines in the edit/write screen, that this setting can be changed and it doesn’t seem to be very well known.
It’s another one of the “hidden” or “I didn’t even know it was there” settings.