Comment Order Poll

Comments currently appear from newest to oldest. Several people have asked me to reverse the order. Personally, I prefer newest to oldest, but hey, I'm a flexible Guy, so cast your vote! Not only that, but I've been dying to try this Blog Flux polling thing.

Comments

[Robert]

I think I'm one of those Canadian posters... For some reason, my IP address that has been assigned to me is a Canadian IP/hostname. Some websites (Google) transfer me over to the *.ca domain... Eh?

[thee mysterious nanojath]

It's all about personal style. Type A thread browser lets the discussion mature, maybe drops in an early comment to frame the discussion, and reads the whole thing a couple of times through. This person likes old to new listing, otherwise they have to read a bunch of posts in reverse order i.e. down to up for their rhetorical order to make sense. Type b (e.g. Mr. Kawasaki?) starts reading the discussion early, and returns to it frequently to see how it progresses. These individuals like newest to oldest so the first thing they see are the new comments. They don't need the spatial order of the posts to make sense because they are reading them in more or less real time. Lesson? Maybe display order should be a viewer option, delivered to order some sort of active/interactive table thing.

[Sara in Austin]

Wow, the Blog Flux Map is the neatest part of this "discussion". Nothing stands out on the map, but just think if it is did -- "You Texans are all backwards thinkers" (that would include me) or "Just like water draining in the wrong direction, everyone in Austalia thinks in the wrong direction..." I see a lot of potential for balkanization if this sort of mapping becomes standard practice. What if we could see the weight of various regions in all posts?

Second thought -- if they are just doing a registration address look up of the voter's domain, I don't know how accurate this is. (Say I'm posting from my large corporate employers network -- wouldn't I show up as posting from NY instead of from TX? Anyone know?)

[stefan]

well, hey, at least this way, everyone gets to be first post for a little while.

the newest -> oldest is definintely an interesting way to present the discussion, and far more interesting if you're reloading the site often, however, for someone reading the articles after the discussion has started, it would be useful if it said simply, "comments: newest first"

but then again, i don't know if that's possible within the constraints of your blogging software.

[Mark Verg]

You're right...that Blog Flux is very cool!

[Ric]

@Brad - you sure took some heat on bottom-posting! - For what it's worth, I agree with you on email, and often apologise for using Outlook at work; and I voted for oldest-to-newest here.

@Guy - it's your blog, do what feels best to you. But remember Cameron's comment ...

[Brad Hutchings]

Right now, it's running 50-50. I'd like to offer some analysis on the electorate. 50% take this question seriously, and demand recent comments on the bottom. The other 50% see Guy's preference, and figure they could tweak the hell out of the serious people by voting for the status quo. Personally, I'm just getting even for the shallacking I took from the fiskers and bottom replyers in that "effective e-mail" posting, so I voted against change.

[Guy Kawasaki]

Alfonso,

Cocomment integrates into TypePad and replaces its comment system? I read the site. I can't quite figure out what it does.

Thanks,

Guy

[alfonso II]

regarding polls this is my preferred provider:
http://www.dpolls.com/
you get the results on the applet itself, no pop-up and no page relaod as well as neat visual.

Disclaimer:
I have no vested interest in any of those services

[alfonso]

As often the solution could be "personalization"

http://www.Cocomment.com offers exactly that, all your comments and their cocommented responses become trackable and archived, and you can set the prefered chronology ;-)
see Robert Scoble on the subject:
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/04/track-your-comments-no-matter-where-you-make-them/

I personally prefer most recent on top.

[David]

My impression is that it is a function of how often you check in to read new comments. If often, you just want to see the newest ones at the top. If less often, then you want to start from the beginning.

Guy, since you post one a day, oldest to newest would seem more logical.

[catalinpetru]

isn't it easier to follow a discussion, from the intro, to the final ?:)

i usually scroll from up to down, i don;t know how you do it :)

keep up the good work

[Ric]

@Cameron - nice one - I had to laugh!

@Guy - I'm not sure you have a mandate for change! I liked the map too - seems you have a far-flung readership.

[Cameron Hayne]

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