People often ask me technical questions about the blog. “Do you use an astrocambio degengalator to massaultify your bacrogoggles?” In fact, I’ve had people get angry at me as if I was being intentionally unhelpful when they have asked questions and I have responded in ignorance.
I am telling you the truth, here, when I say that I am likely the least technologically proficient blog editor ever. I know how to write. Sometimes, when the mood hits, I even edit what I write. I know how to post it and then publish it on a WordPress format. Beyond that, I’m pretty must lost.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions, comments and complaints about our threaded (or nested – whatever term you like) comments. People “reply” to a comment, but their comment gets posted somewhere else. Sometimes, a comment finds its way to the bottom of the page and no matter what anyone does, it stays there. Sound familiar?
Usually, what people do at that time is complain to me. And what I do is answer the same as I answer most technical discussions. Doh! I don’t know. I don’t much understand threading and I certainly have no idea what to do when it goes haywire.
But there is a solution, one I would like to put forward for your discussion. We can simply turn off threading and all comments will appear in chronological order of their posting and stay there.
Obviously, there are pros and cons here.
On the pro side, the number of the previous comment doesn’t change. Comment 43 is always comment 43. On the con side, it gets hard to carry on a conversation when other comments intervene.
So, I’m interested in whether anyone has an opinion. A year or so ago, Tony (the technological mastermind who put this blog together) put up a poll about this, but there was not a lot of response. Here’s your chance to tell me what you think.
Do you like nested comment threads or would you rather have them chronological?
