The sequence of the user comments displayed is wrong
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I would recommend you to display user comments to a page or post in a consistent sequence. After 4 years and 2000 posts I have just discovered that your display sequencing now is totally willy-nilly.
You display the comments in the order of arrival with the latest first, right? Yes, and it is done perfectly. And whenever the capacity of the visible file is reached, you create a continuation file with a pointer to it at the bottom of the visible file. So far you are doing everything right.
But then you fail in your mission. From that point on, you place all new comments not at the top of the visible file as before, but instead at the top of the continuation file. The older comments already sitting in the visible file stay where they are forever, and all the newer comments will be hidden in the continuation file. Yes, they are hidden unless you know to scroll down to below comment number 1 that forever rests at the bottom of the visible file, and there find the pointer button to the continuation file.
What should be done instead? The very LATEST comment should ALWAYS be placed at the TOP of the VISIBLE comments, and the OVERFLOW of older comments should be transferred to the continuation file. That would be intuitive, it would be consistent, and it would be correct.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Of course! I write my blog in Swedish, but I think that that should be only a minor inconvenience for you. The dates are therefore expressed as year/month/day and the time in 24-hour format. The times shown to me are in Pacific time and may differ from yours.
The page is my home page on gymbrat/wordpress/com, and it is called ‘Välkommen!’ (meaning ‘Welcome!’).
The topmost comment displayed came from Johan on 2013/07/12 at 19.48.
The bottommost comment displayed is the 10th, and it came from Ron Liburdi on 2010/12/04 at 19.27. It is the first comment that I ever got.
Below it, there is a button to click, named ‘Nyare kommentarer’ (meaning ‘Newer comments’). That leads to a continuation file, where:
The topmost comment displayed came from Göran on 2013/11/14 at 11:17. It is the latest comment that I have received so far.
The bottommost comment displayed is the 4th, and it came from Inge on 2013/08/10 at 01.44. It is the first comment that I got after the topmost comment on the basic file on 2013/07/12 at 19.48.
Below it, there is a button to click, named ‘Äldre kommentarer’ (meaning ‘Older comments’). That leads back to the basic file.
So, as you see, every detail is correct in both the basic file and the continuation file, and that is true also for the pointers (to ‘Newer’ and ‘Older’), which proves that the problem is not an accident – it was designed this way. Which is truly backwards and wrong.
I was most encouraged by your request for info, and I already thank you for your interest in this matter.
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So I have a sugestion that may help.
Log into your WordPress.com site’s dashboard and go to Settings–>Discussion.
Then look for the setting I have highlighted here:
And change it to “last” and see if that does what you were hoping to see.
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Yes-yes-yes, that did it! The right way of sequencing the comments was available all along as an alternative to the defaulted wrong way, and I didn’t know about it. Thank you, Rootjosh, so very much for helping me with the solution.
I can not for the life of me understand that anyone would like to have the first 10 received comments displayed and to hide all newer comments in the overflow file – but since it was designed to allow for both methods I guess that some must have wanted it that way.
Rootjosh, you were so good and quick with your solution that I would like you to address another issue that I have in the same general area. Should I enter it as a new ‘idea’ and suggest you to respond, or should I attach it here as part of this current ‘idea’?
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Thank you so much, Rootjosh! Here is the somewhat related issue, which is really minor, but it is difficult to explain to my readers.
I use the blogging format for writing my memoirs, and it works very well. I started writing 60 posts a month, but after a year or so I cut it down to a more reasonable 30. Then, about a year ago, WordPress changed to what appears to be a maximum of 50 posts in one file, and therefore placed the overflowing 10 posts of all my early 60-post months into a continuation file with a link button to ‘earlier posts’ at the bottom of the main file. That was intuitive to my readers, and easy for me to explain.
However, reading a memoir is like reading a book, and in a blog that means reading the posts from the bottom up. Thus, I have instructed my readers to scroll to the bottom and reading my posts upward from there, and they have no problem doing that. However, when reading my early months with their 60 posts backwards, the switchover from post 10 in the continuation file to post 11 in the main file is now cumbersome and complicated.
Since the switchover was done perfectly right in the downward direction, it would have been nice if it had been done perfectly also in the upward direction. That is where I wonder if you could adjust it – or find me a spot in Settings where the right method might already be an option.
When the reader has read post 10 in the continuation file and wants to continue with post 11 above it, there ought to be a link button right there, saying ‘Newer posts’ and taking him to the bottom of the main file, where he will find the end of post 11.
There is now no such link button above post 10. Therefore, in my instructions I have to tell my reader to (1) scan to the bottom of the continuation file, (2) click there on a link button, saying ‘Newer posts’, which will bring him to post 60 at the top of the main file, and (3) scroll down to post 11 at the bottom of the main file.
To do this is not intuitive and also difficult to explain in my instructions. You can surely see how much better it would be if the reader could scroll upwards between the two files as easily as it is to scroll downwards.
Yes, in the scheme of things this is not a Very Important Problem, and nobody has complained about it to me in a comment, so all I ask you for is to look into how extensive it would be to correct this nuisance, i. e. (1) to move the ‘Newer post’ link button from the bottom to the top of the continuation file and (2) to change the link destination from the top to the bottom of the main file. I am fully prepared to understand that the effort might not be worth making.
Thank you, Rootjosh, for lending me your ear!
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I understand exactly what you are asking.
However, the bad news is that there is no way to do what you are asking on WordPress.com.
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You could not have worded your finding in a nicer way, and I thank you for that. I can now put my idea to rest, and you can now close this issue. But I am not closing you – I will keep your name handy if anything else of this sort comes up, against all odds.
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