I realize this is a pretty minor thing but anyway. I'm adding comment support to my website/blog. I'm trying to decide if I want the comments to be sorted from oldest to newest or from newest to oldest. Which one generally makes more sense, or does it even matter?
Answer
I prefer comments to be in chronological order and threaded.
That way, when comments turn into conversations - and they often do, those are easy to follow. Any other order of comments makes it impossible, or at least very hard.
Newest on top means you have to go down to see what is being responded to. And if you decide to start at the bottom, you are continually switching between scrolling up (newer comment) and down (within a comment) to read what was going on between a couple of posters.
Sorting by relevance really messes up conversations. Plus: how is relevance being computed? May not be the reader's interpretation of what comments are relevant.
Conversations should really always be threaded to make them easier to follow. When you turn on threaded conversations, newest or oldest on top becomes less important, though you should still account for people responding to an older comment without using the "reply" option. Which is how I arrived at my preference: threaded conversations and oldest on top.
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