just what we needed

[rattleback]

Is it just me, or is there a voguelet for newest-first comments going on out there?

It is difficult for me to imagine a less helpful innovation in this context.

Comments

[greeneyedsadie]

I hang out on a couple of blogs that do the whole "first comment" thing and I typically just ignore them. It's really the easiest way to discourage this stupid habit.

[rattleback]

I think we're referring to different things - my fault, I think I was unclear. My gripe was with blogs that put the most recent comments at the top. I think in some cases it's catering to the hard-core, high-traffic, refresh-hitting commenters, and in other cases it's just misuse of third-party comment managers.

In any case, you're on the beam about the F1RST!!1! types.

[greeneyedsadie]

Oh! I see. You know, I hardly ever read comments on news articles/blogs because they're typically just reactionary and hysterical. I'd rather just read the main article and that's it.

[rattleback]

I'm that way myself, but a number of quasi-professional things I read have just enough informed comment among the claptrap that I have to lift the grate (tm principaltogar). It's kind of like USENET that way, and the effect of reverse-chronological threaded comments is pretty close to that of top-posting. Yuck.