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Dan C. Rinnert
193 days ago |
What is your preferred method for structuring the comments on your blog?
The typical means is to show the oldest at the top and the newest at the bottom and with or without threading and nesting.
With that method, the strategy for blog commenters is to be among the first to leave a comment so that their link gets seen. Even if you disregard (and delete) the comment spammers, do you think such a system tends to discourage new comments after the quantity of comments has reached a certain point? Will people think that they will go unnoticed if their comment is at the very bottom of a long list? Thus, might they choose instead to not leave a comment and try to be among the first on your next thread?
I'm curious as to whether anyone has tried the other approach, where the newest is on top rather than on the bottom. Does that encourage participation more? Each time you visit the page, you're more likely to see something new that way and perhaps be enticed to leave yet another comment.
On the downside, would that invite more spammers? After all, instead of being first, they just need to have the most recent comment. The other downside is that I think we are used to seeing the newest information last. That's not always the case. A blog, for example, has the most recent information first, but then, when you get to the comments, the most recent comment will be last. The difference, of course, is that the comments tend to become a conversation whereas the post is just the opening speech--a monologue, if you will.
Anyway, those are the thoughts going through my head at the moment, and I am curious as to whether anyone has tested the latter approach and, if so, what the results were.
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