Setting to toggle between threaded & chronological comment order?
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Is there any way that my blog can be set such that users can easily toggle between viewing comments in the threaded configuration and the chronological? There are major advantages and disadvantages to each, and being able to easily toggle provides the best of both worlds. You can see this sort of option on bulletin boards such as yahoogroups… no matter where a reader is in a comment series, they can easily see the option to toggle to the other viewing method – and even select a particular post of interest then toggle such that the new page display starts with the reader still focused on that comment. This is incredibly useful and helpful especially on high comment volume posts.
Any way to do this with wordpress? I know of one very high volume blog that’s been with you folks for a long time who’s owner would very much like to have this option (along with an absolute boatload of his readers, who constantly ask about this issue), and in setting mine up, I sure would also like to be able to let readers easily toggle the comment pages between threaded and chronological views.
If this can’t be done, may I please please PLEASE beg wordpress to create this option? I wouldn’t think it would be that difficult compared to the complexity you folks already manage to provide so well.
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In case you aren’t aware of what’s currently available, you can set up threaded AKA nested comments on your blog. See here please > Settings » Discussion Settings
4. Enable threaded (nested) comments __ levels deep- Turn on this option to allow visitors to reply to other comments inline/nested. When turned on it can allow for better discussions and responses. We suggest using a maximum of 3 levels deep. Anything higher and the theme layouts may not work as expected.
Note: Enabling the setting only applies to new comments since existing comments don’t have any threading date. However, disabling this setting applies to all comments. From: http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#other-comment-settings
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Timetheif, while I thank you for your reply, I was already aware of that information. It doesn’t even begin to solve the problem, however, which is a need to not only be able to see nested comments, but also be able to see comments made after you last read each comment.
Trying to figure out what new comments have been posted to a threaded-nested setting on a high volume site is a horribly frustrating disaster. It’s far too easy to miss newer comments, or default to only searching ones directly related to something you posted yourself even when you’d very much like to read them all, or drop out of reading entirely because searching for newer comments nested amongst all the comments you’ve already read is a time consuming nightmare.
That’s why the ability <b>for a reader or commentator to be able to toggle back and forth</b> between threaded and chronological displays is so invaluable.
Being stuck in one or the other is a royal pain and really detracts from one’s ability to work thru very active comment sections.
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Hello there,
I took note that the free hosted WordPress.com blog linked to your username has no content yet, so I assumed you were new and might not be aware of what’s currently available.If you do intend to create a high traffic blog and want to apply to have WordPress.com host it you ought to check out VIP Services: Support & Hosting.
I’ll flag this thread so it’s moved into the Ideas Forum where we can submit suggestions regarding feature improvements to WordPress.com Staff.
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Thank you timetheif. I appreciate that you did reply, and recognized you were trying to be sure I was aware of current options. I’d hoped that was clear from my initial post.
I did just register with wordpress – honestly at this point primarily to try the dashboard for following comments more than to create a new blog. I am the owner however of a fairly high volume bb that I started over 10 years ago – and quite a few years ago I actually moved the entire group from the bb we’d been using to another primarly because it allowed easy toggling back and forth between threaded and chrono. displays by the reader/user/folks adding comments.
You’re probably aware of how much people hate change and will pushback and grumble over a switch like that – and yet almost immediately pretty much all the feedback was very positive because that one feature was so incredibly useful that everyone felt it well worth the hassle of learning a new system and getting used to totally different interface, controls, etc. There was still some grumbling worked in over the rest, but even those indicated that they were awfully glad we had changed because of the toggle view.
Anyhow, there are a few wordpress blogs that I’ve read regularly for several years now, and one in particular that I do post comments to pretty often – that’s an extremely high volume blog, and so the chronological view is far preferable when the choice is limited to strictly one or the other. Years ago I asked the owner of that blog if a toggle was possible, and he said no, but he sure wished it was also. Any number of times I’ve seen others post requesting threaded view – only to see others reply that with such volume on each comment page/series, they far prefer chronological given only the either or option.
In other words, I’ve absolutely no doubt that an easy toggle option would be most appreciated by a very large number of wordpress users – both blog owners and their readership and commentators.
When I first posted this question, I was pretty sure that it wasn’t possible – but hoped I was wrong, or that at least the idea would be picked up as a future free wordpress enhancement. Heck, I’ve even toyed with the idea of whether it would be possible to somehow mirror an entire wordpress blog including comments, just so the clone could display in threaded version while the original displayed chronological – it’d be a heck of a work around (if even possible) and wouldn’t be nearly as convenient as a user toggle associated with each post or at the top of the screen or something that way – but it’d be better than being limited to only threaded, or only chronological! (e.g., be sure that on very long comment pages folks can still easily hit the toggle button – don’t just have it at the top of a page where folks might have to scroll forever to get to it and lose their place in the comment series in the process only to have to find it again after toggling)
Anyhow, THANK YOU for moving this to the Ideas Forum, and I oh-so-much-hope that WordPress will add this feature soon! I was going to try to figure out how to submit it as a suggestion myself, but thought it best to be absolutely sure it wasn’t already an option I’d overlooked (just send me a small royality for giving ’em the idea that will make so many folks happy and bring you guys in even more business! {VBG})
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I’m sorry but I’m visually challenged and very busy so I did not read that block of text above.
When I first began blogging it didn’t take me long to establish that frequenting any high traffic blogs that have large comments sections meant reading the comments of competing troll,s who encamp out in the same blogs daily and harangue each other, whilst posturing that they are engaged in rational debate. I determined to cease visiting high traffic blogs that reek of political and/or religious ideologies at all costs years ago and that’s still my policy.
Cheers
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No problem (re block of text). Timetheif, will I be able to see what they decide to do or how things are developing on this issue over in the ideas area?
As to the type of blogs you’re referring to, I know exactly what you’re talking about and I avoid those like the plague too.
The high volume one that I have myself is directly related to cutting edge scientifically based equine veterinary medicine (I have a world renoun equine veterinarian as my top moderator). Things we’ve discovered and spread the word about are now common practice for a couple of often fatal equine diseases – it’s made an amazing difference that I would never have dreamed I could have started and guided to such widespread and widely known results that have drastically improved the quality of life, usefulness and length of life for these horses. It really is amazing what interaction between large numbers of people with similar problems guided with professionalim, a few actual experts, and a dash of empathy thrown in, can manage to accomplish sometimes.
Others I’ve frequented were somewhat similar tho lower frequency and nowhere near the quality, but still quite useful and related to either dog or cat veterinary medicine.
The wordpress high volume blog I frequent is also quite scientifically oriented, as are a few other wordpress ones that I hit only occassionally. Although there are some related political issues that wind up being discussed because public policy is supposed to rest on the science. Most folks are pretty well behaved, the worst/clearest trolls get a few stern but polite warnings and are then moderated or tossed if really extreme, and some excellent scientists actually regularly frequent it and post there too – including answering some questions in the comment sections from the likes of me who have a strong science background but not in the area in question, or some will even answer questions from laymen. You get to know fairly quickly which poster’s comments to skip over even so.
Blogs and Bulletin Boards like these often aren’t the easiest to be found, but those that exist can be really interesting and if you’re dealing with directly related issues yourself they can be a godsend. I really like helping others where I can too. It can be a pain in the butt finding and weeding thru sites that turn out not to be worth it in order to find the ones that are, tho obviously some are awfully easy to toss entirely after just a minute or two reading them.
Kind regards,
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