Preference on Order of Comments - Be Heard!

I voted oldest to newest. It will be tedious to scroll past everything I've already read, but at least there will be a sense of conversation instead of confusion.

How long until replies start flowing in the RSS feed again?

jael,

It's definitely on our list, but haven't got there yet.

Mike

I was beginning to like the way I could choose where to locate my reply - Maybe I'm making this up, but when the new format first rolled out, it seemed that you could reply "to the thread" by replying at the bottom - and you reply them showed up chronologically on the overall thread, OR you could reply to a particular post, by using the "Reply" function located on each individual post. This would result in "nesting" your response right up against the post you were replying to....

Maybe I'm making this up - and it was all a post-New Years eggnogg-induced dream...

But I liked it. Although I think it got lost int he overall shock of learning to read posts from newest at the top to oldest at the bottom....

Why not put a sort tool up and people can choose whether they want ascending, descending or whatever else you can think of.

Voting in the poll, but please let me add my voice to that last comment/request - please, may we have the old style RSS feed back?

G.

I was beginning to like the way I could choose where to locate my reply - Maybe I'm making this up, but when the new format first rolled out, it seemed that you could reply "to the thread" by replying at the bottom - and you reply them showed up chronologically on the overall thread, OR you could reply to a particular post, by using the "Reply" function located on each individual post. This would result in "nesting" your response right up against the post you were replying to....

I think you were referring to hierarchical comments, vs "flat" comments. And no, you weren't dreaming. Unfortunately, impossible to solve the problem of chronological vs. reverse-chronological comment display with nested comments. We experimented with it and found it completely unworkable.

And yes, I liked it as well ...

Mike

Gary,

I hear you, my friend ... just give us some time. You know, that whole resource/time issue we all deal with occasionally. ;-)

Mike

Mark me down into the oldest to newest camp

Mike - and I hear /you/ :) No worries - I assumed it was somewhere on the list, from earlier comments. I wasn't going to say anything more, but as I was posting anyways...

I'll admit to being glad the hierarchical stuff has gone though - that was making it a nightmare, at least for me, to figure out what I'd read and what I hadn't. I suspect hierarchical/nested would have bothered me less if the RSS feeds had been there. Equally though, I always tend to think that I'm probably not a typical use case in how I interact with the forums!

Content's still great, site stability is there, folks are obviously invested in this, and I can only hope the back-end benefits are there for you as well.

Wheel keeps a'turnin'.

G.

Mike,

I'd like to see the Posts since last visit feature back.
It was a great way for me to keep abreast of activity while logging in a few times a week, ...oops sorry, a few times a day.

I do see when the Recent Forum Activity will be very helpful when I am away from the forums for more than a week.

I am a fan of oldest to newest as I like to go back and read the conversations develop.

Please, oh please, let the comments flow from oldest to newest [or give us an option under our preferences]. I've never seen a forum go from newest to oldest. This defies logic. It makes sense for blog postings, but not in forums. Please reinstate.

Although a significant number of folks (~30%) prefer the current order, the majority prefer oldest to newest.

Done. Closed.

Mike - the text of your post resolving the question reminds me of those great Nextel commercials, like the firefighters in the legislature ("Clean water? Everybody in favor of clean water? Done. That was easy.").

Thanks for everything you're doing on the new site.

-Hugh

:-)

Thanks, Hugh!

Mike

Can you imagine that I had to look for the last comments on this thread? Ah, at the bottom!
thanks!

Great - thanks!

Now, you need to get the widget that takes us straight to the newest message in the thread that we haven't read. You know, like real forum software has?

Jael,

A real forum is created by the people and the ideas, not the software.

John

Thanks, John ... I responded, then deleted my response (and yes, Hugh, I did take advantage of my sys admin privileges ;-)

Folks, ask *kindly* and I'll do my best.