Due to the large number of comments on some topics, I’ve added a feature that divides the comments into pages. It should speed up loading times considerably on those posts with many comments.
My first question is this: would you prefer to see the newest comments first (at the top of the list), or the oldest?
Second, how many comments should be on each page? (It’s currently set to 15) Mike
First question is tricky: I think if you get there first you should have your comment at the top (so oldest first)
Second: for background, TUAW has 20 and Engadget has 50. I think 20 is a pretty good number – quite fast loads and still lots of content.
Newest comments first, that way you encourage discussion as fresh thoughts and ideas are bumped to the top. But then the problem with that is if you have a conversation within the comments, reading backwards makes it more difficult to follow.
So, if you could, I’d say, have the latest comment at the top and then run the rest of the comments (including the latest) from oldest to newest beneath that.
(There are plugins that can display the latest posts, perhaps one of these could be used?)
As for comments per page, I’d also like to see a more intelligent answer with that as well. Imagine having 12 comments per page with a 4 comment overrun, if there’s somewhere between 13 and 16 comments, they all stay on one page, but as soon as the 17th comment is posted, the first 12 are on one page and 5 on the second.
That way you’ll never have say 13 comments spread out with 12 on one page and 1 comment all on it’s own on another page.
I see you’re using WordPress, I don’t know if either of these are available as plugins, but they’re changes I’d like to make on my own WordPress website.
Oldest comments first. It’s the way almost all systems do it, so people would be confused if it were otherwise. Anywhere between 10 and 20 per page is fine.
I prefer oldest comments first. Also, can you make the amount of comments user determinable? I prefer to see all comments on one page, even if it takes a little while to load.
Oldest comments first.
J – There is a ’show all’ link, so you’ll always have that option.
I’m accustomed to ‘Oldest first.’
Regarding the number of comments, I don’t read them anyways. But if I was to pick a number I would pick 10.
Definitely oldest first: English reads top-to-bottom; and you scroll down while reading the article, then continue scrolling down to read the comments in chronological order. If you want to read the latest comment, just hit End (or equivalent).
Number: maybe 10-20?
I would say oldest first and about 20 – 25 per page.
If you split things into multiple pages, then I’d say newest comments first.
25 comments per page.