forum sequencing

Sometimes I revisit a forum issue and when I do I have to tab down to the bottom to see new development or comment. Would it be better if comment sequencing be in the LIFO mode? (Last in first out).

drmr4vrmr reignites one of the oldest disputes in computer-dom: whether a computer-mediated discussion should be presented in natural sequence (oldest first aka 'bottom posting') or in inverse sequence with the newest first (aka 'top posting'). One way to sidestep the discussion would be to offer both alternatives and let the user choose.

I favour the current arrangements (i.e. bottom posting) because you start off seeing how the discussion started off.

On topics that you are explicitly tracking, the discussion opens at the latest, new comment which you haven't yet read - which is very sensible. e.g. if you have read 30 comments, but there are 4 new ones you haven't read, then the 31st comment is displayed.

For the rest, it opens at the first post. (Apart from Most Recent Posts, where it opens at the last.) Since many people don't quote earlier replies, the alternative would be something like this:

TOPIC TITLE: QUESTION !!!???

LATEST REPLY: What's wrong with f3?

INITIAL POSTING: I've heard you shouldn't leave your knight on f3. Is there genuine theory behind this - or has someone just made it up to illustrate a point?

If the discussion spans more than one page (about 20 posts), a LAST POST navigation link is provided to take you directly to the final contribution.

REFERENCES

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html

so there is a difference in presentation. thanks for the info artfizz. makes lot of sense to me. in that case consider my comment widrawn

It's slightly curious, though, that Next and Previous are both in terms of pages rather than posts. While this is fine semantics for Next - since it takes you to the first post on the next page, Previous takes you to the first posting on the previous page.

Thus, if you are reading the posts in reverse order, you scroll up the screen reading 43, 42, 41 - hit Previous - and you are shown 21.

Whatever they do, I wish they would make it consistent over the site. The forum does one thing, everywhere else (comments to articles, blogs etc) does another.

In a perfect world, it'd show oldest first, but hiding the posts you had already seen.

Agreed, Scarblac. Some forums do one thing, other forums do another thing. It makes me dizzy.

Thanks, artfizz, for referring me here!

"^ Back to top" also takes you back to the start of the current page (of 20 or so posts) - i.e. same as Previous - not to the #1 post.

However, clicking on page 1 (just above "^ Back to top")

          « Previous | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | Next » | Last Post

does take you back to the very first post.

That would be nice.

The recent site enhancements announcement ... http://blog.chess.com/webmaster/site-enhancements---20110616  illustrated some of the weaknesses of using the blog format for a discussion:

- there's no QUOTING

- entries are not numbered

Would you believe: There's no QUOTE button.

What is the number of that last blog post?

I don't doubt that it is possible to quote - merely that it is made more difficult by the absence of a QUOTE button.

Not quite as intuitive or referrable as forum posts then, where the first post is #1, the 2nd is #2, and so on.

I should have specified sequence number.

Interestingly, if the unique ID could be used (in theory) to provide the ability-to-hyperlink-to-individual-posts.