Soliciting Comments on Comments
Posted by Danielle Bean in Family on Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:01 PM
UPDATE: I’m having trouble getting the poll to appear properly here. Please vote at PollDaddy (but read the explanation below first!).
We’ve had some trouble recently with readers being unable to find their comments in posts after they’ve added them.
New comments appear in the sidebar of the F&F blog page under the “recent comments” heading. This can be a handy way to keep track of conversations and quickly update yourself on ongoing discussions just by clicking the link to the most recent comment.
The trouble is that it doesn’t work well on posts that get many comments, like the Coffee Talk discussions for example. The trouble with these posts is that after a certain number, the comments are put onto a second page. Due to a bug in the system, the sidebar links to comments on the second page don’t work—they just bring you to the main page of the post with the first page of comments. This is why many commenters thought their comments weren’t appearing. They were, but on the second page of comments.
Is this confusing yet? Bear with me ...
While our tech guys are super smart and working super hard to find a way around that bug, we have two options.
1)We can leave comments as they are with sidebar links to comments not working on posts with many comments.
Or
2) We can reverse the order in which comments appear, with the most recent comments appearing at the top of the page and the older comments appearing at the bottom. (Those of you who are old-timers might remember that this is how I used to have comments work on my own blog years ago.) If we reverse the order, the newest comments will always be on the first page so the sidebar links will always work.
Most blogs have the most recent comments appear at the bottom of the page and I know some people are annoyed by “backwards” comments. But then, some people are annoyed by broken links in the sidebar and recent comments that are difficult to find.
We want to know what you prefer. So please cast your vote in our poll. If you have questions or other suggestions, please leave them in the comments here.
May the best option win ...
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