Ok, this has been bugging me since I found this site a long time ago. Why are the Comments going from oldest to newest (Ascending). Should it not be newest to oldest? Especially since you guys update products. For example, you have a break-out board and the first comment is “this doesn’t work as posted” or something along those lines. But you have updated the board and all is good. Someone will read the old comment first and change the page. Even if you don’t care who reads the comments, wouldn’t it be better for sales if they didn’t read that old comment?
Strictly speaking, they’re ordered first by stars, then by date. We’re gonna keep pushing stuff with more stars to the top, but this seems like a pretty valid point, at least for product comments. We’ll try it out there over the next few days and see what happens.
Thanks for the input.
Thanks Brennen. I understand the concept of the star. I do click a star if a post was helpful. But, I also notice that there isn’t a lot of members clicking them… Maybe they don’t know you can click them to raise their status? Maybe throw in a note right above the comments section? If you already have a note, then my apologies as I have never seen it.
We’ve spent more time talking about this than I really want to admit. I take the view that we’ve got a pretty good equilibrium right now: long-term users and employees know they can star a comment, which functions as something of an editorial filter, but it’s not a focus of the site to the extent that it has too many pathological side-effects. To the extent that we can, we want to foster a community of interest where status derives more from being useful to others than from point-collecting game mechanics. I think a simple, not-too-heavily emphasized “good comment!” system is about as far as we want to push in this direction.
I absolutely agree. Keep it simple. Thanks for your time and hope the re-organizing of comments brings order to chaos.