Now on ScienceBlogs: Respiratory disease outbreaks in nursing homes
Comments: ascending or descending?
Currently comments to posts are shown in descending order (most recent comment first). Do you like this, or do you prefer that they appear in the conventional ascending order? And while I'm asking, is there anything else about the presentation...
Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
« Telephone with Temperature | Main | More Lott sock puppets »
Category: meta
Posted on: November 12, 2005 11:36 PM, by Tim Lambert
Currently comments to posts are shown in descending order (most recent comment first). Do you like this, or do you prefer that they appear in the conventional ascending order?
And while I'm asking, is there anything else about the presentation of this blog that could be improved?
Update: Ascending order it is.
Share on: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/91897
PZ Myers 11.09.2009
PZ Myers 11.09.2009
Ed Brayton 11.09.2009
Tim Lambert 11.08.2009
Orac 11.10.2009
Comments
conventional is better, in my opinion. Otherwise, blog is great.
It would be improved maybe if you raffled off interesting items like half used bags of brown sugar, or maybe a small piece of dried glue, from time to time.
Posted by: ben | November 13, 2005 1:00 AM
I'm a fan of conventional too.
Posted by: Terence | November 13, 2005 1:57 AM
Descending fixes the first post failure.
And you can't really follow threads in comments anyways.
Posted by: Erik | November 13, 2005 3:40 AM
Conventional ascending order is best
Posted by: Rajesh | November 13, 2005 4:23 AM
Another vote for conventional.
Posted by: Glen Raphael | November 13, 2005 4:40 AM
And another vote for conventional.
Posted by: Peter Hearnden | November 13, 2005 5:00 AM
I've enjoyed the content of your Blog since stumbling on it several months ago, but your Blog design is poor, to be brutally frank. Conventional order of replies would be better. Reading replies from the bottom up is annoying- what were you thinking?? Also, the washed out green colour you use could be improved. Blue may be boring, but it works best as a dominant colour. Finally, since I am a pedant I'll point out that you let yourself down by not thoroughly editing your text before hitting the send button. You make too many typos, grammar errors and so on. Cheers.
Posted by: Steve Munn | November 13, 2005 5:14 AM
Descending order is good for the few people who are most active in a discussion on the comment sections. They can update the page every hour or so and quickly see new entries. However, for everyone else it is a major nuisance. Trying to read backwards to follow a discussion is cumbersome.
My vote is for conventional, ascending order.
Posted by: Thomas Palm | November 13, 2005 5:18 AM
I'm boring and conventional too! Glad you've changed
Posted by: William Connolley | November 13, 2005 5:04 PM
I was finding the descending order a bit hard to read as well.
Posted by: Ender | November 13, 2005 5:23 PM
Ascending order is the best order there can be. It would be good if the text on the banner there, even though it probably isn't very interesting, were bigger, so people at least have the option of reading it.
And I like the green.
Posted by: the amazing kim | November 14, 2005 12:13 AM
Yep, ascending order is good.
And more pictures of hot naked statisticians.
Posted by: Nabakov | November 14, 2005 1:47 AM
I prefer ascending.
Posted by: Ian Gould | November 14, 2005 1:49 AM
why not simply close it down. That way, up down sideways, no one will give a shit
Posted by: Joe c | November 14, 2005 4:53 AM
Why not have a comment bot that puts an automatic gravatar of a dipsh*t next to comments like oh, say, #15.
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | November 14, 2005 12:26 PM
Is it feasible to allow search comments by author?
Posted by: z | November 14, 2005 2:34 PM
Actually, when the subject is hot and new comments are flying in, ascending order is good, when the subject is cold and new comments come in one at a time several months apart, descending order is better.
Posted by: z | November 14, 2005 2:36 PM
Joe C.
The only people who won't "give a shit" are those who have to rely on hate mail to make their points because they don't have what it takes to defend their arguments with data and analysis--or for that matter, even the ability to read the documentation already provided to them by others.
Fortunately, there's only a handful of these folks in the world and they're all working for Right-Wing extremist outfits like Brookes News. No one with any professional standards will give them jobs, and no one who can defend their arguments properly read such forums.
If you're who I think you are, this will be relevant.
Posted by: Scott Church | November 14, 2005 4:03 PM
I've often felt many conservatives seem to derive their petulant general outlook on life from difficulties with constipation.
Posted by: z | November 15, 2005 10:13 AM
What I find noteworthy here is that so many people of greatly varying tastes and opinions care enough about the Deltoid reading experience to weigh in with their comments. One low-wattage commenter even felt the need to insert an irrelevant and witless slam -- which says something about his involvement, if not his discernment.
Relatively few blogs can claim as much.
You already have my vote, so you know I regard unidirectional text flow in threads to be a Good Thing. Yay!
Posted by: jre | November 17, 2005 7:20 PM