Leaving the nest

Comment nesting is turned off. Comments now appear oldest first. Comment paging was previously turned off; all comments to an article appear on one page.

I strongly suggest you use the “Quote” feature if you want to comment on another comment.

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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19 Responses to Leaving the nest

  1. Slartibartfast says:

    Let me be the first to say thank you! In my opinion this change greatly increases the readability of this blog. Keep up the great work.

  2. Slartibartfast says:

    Let me be the first to say thank you! In my opinion this greatly improves the readability of the blog.

  3. Slartibartfast says:

    Oops. My bad. Sorry about the double post.

  4. misha says:

    Slartibartfast: Oops. My bad. Sorry about the double post.

    That’s OK, that’s OK

  5. DaveH says:

    It threw me off a bit when I first saw it but I like it a lot better as well. From now on, my name will be posted as DaveH since there is another poster using Dave.

  6. Please try to control your enthusiasm. 🙂

  7. BatGuano says:

    understandable for the want/need for change but….

    a bit stark and sterile from the former self.

  8. euphgeek says:

    I liked nesting. It made it easier to follow a conversation.

  9. richCares says:

    I thought nesting was for the birds.

  10. Slartibartfast says:

    euphgeek: I liked nesting.It made it easier to follow a conversation.

    Maybe, but it made it nearly impossible to follow a thread – especially one with heavy traffic.

  11. BatGuano: understandable for the want/need for change but….a bit stark and sterile from the former self.

    Think of it as a new house, before the new drapes are installed. There will be opportunities to insert a little color as I get the hang of the literally hundreds of style settings.

  12. euphgeek says:

    Slartibartfast: Maybe, but it made it nearly impossible to follow a thread – especially one with heavy traffic.

    I disagree. I was able to follow threads just fine with nesting turned on. I think this makes it harder to follow a thread.

  13. Slartibartfast says:

    euphgeek:
    I disagree.I was able to follow threads just fine with nesting turned on.I think this makes it harder to follow a thread.

    We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. With the new setup, you can read a thread to get current and then subscribe to have future posts emailed to you – to me, it doesn’t get any easier than that. Out of curiosity, how did you find new comments nested in the middle of a thread that was a couple of hundred posts long?

  14. Lupin says:

    I left a note earlier to say I liked it. Hasn’t showed up yet, Is that normal?

  15. Lupin says:

    Well, this one showed up.

  16. euphgeek says:

    Slartibartfast:
    We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.With the new setup, you can read a thread to get current and then subscribe to have future posts emailed to you – to me, it doesn’t get any easier than that.Out of curiosity, how did you find new comments nested in the middle of a thread that was a couple of hundred posts long?

    I’ll admit that there was an occasional post that was a little bit difficult to figure out who it was responding to but the vast majority were easy to follow since my eyes automatically went to the next indent to see a reply. Plus you didn’t have to waste space quoting someone for others to know who you’re responding to.

  17. euphgeek: I’ll admit that there was an occasional post that was a little bit difficult to figure out who it was responding to…Plus you didn’t have to waste space quoting someone for others to know who you’re responding to.

    It may take a while for folks to get used to the format, but it works on heavily-threaded forums like PolitiJab.com. While it does take extra space to quote the previous comment, not indenting nested comments creates a lot of extra space too. Also, the ability to click on the quoted user name and zoom instantly to their previous comment has to be a very efficient approach.

    The WordPress admin interface where I read and write comments was never nested and sometimes I can’t tell what’s attached to what (when it’s not quoted). When that happens, I go looking at the regular user interface, and it’s really difficult for me. Add to that that comment nesting was broken for long threads anyway.

    Life is made up of choices.

  18. Lupin: I left a note earlier to say I liked it. Hasn’t showed up yet, Is that normal?

    The problem with your comment was what you said: “I like it very much.”

    You may think that this is a harmless remark, but as one who has had the opportunity to view 25,000 SPAM comments on this blog (ones you never see), I know that it looks very much like the typical generic nice remark that accompanies a spam comment and hyperlink to some marketing web site or scam hyperlinked to the poster name. The 3rd party spam filter that scans every comment before it appears chose your comment for the spam bucket. I have brushed it off and restored it to its rightful place among the exalted discourse on the site.

  19. euphgeek says:

    Dr. Conspiracy

    I realize you’re not going to change this just because I don’t like it nor do I expect you to. I was just expressing my opinion and my preference. I happen to like nested conversations better because I find them easier to follow.

    Here’s a couple of suggestions I have, though, that you can obviously take or leave. If you ever were to bring nesting back, you could try Disqus which is used on such sites as PoliticalWire and The Washington Independent. It may not be as broken as what you had before. If, on the other hand, you stick with this format, one suggestion I have is to have a “reply” button along with the “quote” button like they have on Little Green Footballs. The “quote” button would work exactly the same as it does now, while the “reply” button would simply reference the previous comment like I did at the top of this post.

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