Michael Hanscom (who was one of the first people to link to my blog – thanks Michael!) has an interesting discussion going about the order of blog posts, building on Eric Meyer’s original post. Eric has a nice summary of

While I won’t be swapping my post order around, Monday’s discussion on weblog post order has resulted in one small change here on Eclecticism.

Hm… this is Meyer’s real problem, isn’t it? Maybe as common courtesy we should link to all the posts that our post references, but I think most people do that anyway.

Some total hacker-dude might propose tying related posts together in some sort of data description scheme and having “previous”, and “next” links for each–like a specialized version of category browsing.

When I started this weblog three years ago, it was a continuation of my web site that I’ve had since 1995. As such, it focused primarily on technology, with an occasional aside into science or art or literature. I started with a free Manila-based weblo…

I think you’ve brought up a great point here: Posts, threads, and replies feel natural in different styles of ordering. It is all very much the whole of the system that gives way to the methods of organization. If I look at a message board that is tree diagrammed for threads, I like to see new posts last. The replies should then be chronologically as well. However, if it is a list of threads with recent posts (as opposed to tree diagrammed boards), then I like to see the thread index in reverse chronological order (threads with new replies at top) and the replies in chronological order (usually because I keep up with threads and boards integrate “goto page xx” into the thread title so you can automatically skip ahead to page xx). Chronological feels right for arguments, especially, because you can read the first volley, the first counterattack, the second volley and counterattack from top to bottom and comprehend it. I really can’t think of something where replies should be reverse chronological in order. My opinions, but that’s how I see the most of the internet and that is what feels natural now.

(Side-note: The reason you can easily judge an earthquake’s number on the richter scale, ‘within a few points,’ is because it is a magnitude. A 3 and a 7 are radically different in power, but they’re only a couple of numbers away.)

Your blog, for instance, uses a “newspaper” style for the main section. You jump from one thought to another within a relatively short time and space frame. This is not necessarily typical but it is within the bandwidth of the different styles of weblogs. However, you provide an additional hypertext capability with the “but wait there’s more” link, and, there’s also the comments link which is set to be more-or-less First-in/First-out.

I do think this is a topic worth exploring further with respect to how it is that we (loggers, humans, authors, et al.) might define a “style” of temporal reporting which is discernible while also, perhaps, maintaining a topical reporting capability. For instance, how would one (a blogger) maintain visibility (link, thread) to a “serial” element (say an ongoing legal battle, ongoing philosophical notion under development, etc.) while at the same time being able to intersperse the blog with new or disparate comments, notions, reports, etc. One could say, “Well use color”. So fa,r we haven’t seen much use of color to discern elements of blogs except as stylized components of the entire website.

An example of this use of color would be a technical course book or manual which contains multiple tracts for either different professions using the manual or different degree candidates required to take the course. I’ve seen many a textbook filled with contents in several different colors, each color relevant to a different tract or degree. This, of course, introduces an entirely new concept to the technical and editorial creation and maintenance of a blog.

I also think one of the issues is everyone’s dependence on a service or software package to produce their blogs. We’re somewhat stuck with what the service or software provides us as a toolset. Here’s an analogy of that concept from way outside this set of tools – it’s hard to sound like a piano when all you have is a woodwind instrument.

Anyway, a concept well worth pursuing. Made me think and that’s good.

By the way, you might be correct. Vanilla may be better than chocolate because vanilla can be made into chocolate by the addition of Hershey’s syrup and stirring the resulting mess into a delicious bowl of goo. Chocolate, on the other hand, is always chocolate.

Radio and television hae long seen themselves as having no past. Research and rating prove that both mediums are very much Memento-esque in nature. TV viewers can only rarely tell you what they watch.

This is somewhat off-topic, but I think you just pinpointed one of the (many) reasons why I don’t pay much attention to TV anymore.

Telephone answering machines work this way.

Really? I’ve never run into an answering machine or voicemail system that worked “backwards”. On the old analog answering machines, you had to rewind the tape to the beginning to hear messages, which were then played back in the order they were received; and on my voicemail system, when I have multiple unheard messages it starts with the “first” (oldest) message and works its way forward until I’ve heard them all. But, of course, that’s just my experience to draw upon.

Seismic recorders work this way.

Again…really? While that’s a piece of equipment that I’ve never encountered directly (as with most current or ex-Alaskans, we can often judge a quake’s severity by feel to within a few points on the Richter scale, and all that fancy equipment the scientists use merely confirms what we’d guessed when we see it in the papers the next day), my mental image is of something similar to an EKG: a needle moving over a continuously roll-fed piece of paper, scrolling from right to left. This would leave a record that, when unrolled, read left to right — the horizontal equivalent of oldest first (at the top/left) and newest last (at the bottom/right). As I said, though, I could easily be wrong!

Email forwardings work this way.

Okay, true, and often, so do long e-mail exchanges with multiple levels of quoted sections in the replies. However, I’d argue that that’s not something inherent in the format, but rather, a (poor) habit of many users. Whenever I reply to someone’s e-mail, I do so much like I’m doing here: quote only the relevant sections, and quote them inline with my responses. It’s far more readable than tossing a reply at the top of a message and then quoting the entire message below (not to mention far less of a waste of space).

To me, this is someone arguing that vanilla is better than chocolate. When, in fact, both are equally valid flavors…

No, sorry. Vanilla is better than chocolate.

(Kidding — I like ‘em both.)

…there’s another issue here: why would I want to catch up with everything someone’s said about their doormat?

Well, if ‘doormat’ is a pesudonym for ‘significant other’, than it could make for some highly entertaining reading. Otherwise, though, you’ve got a definite point.

Actually, though, I think it might be something of a difference in the style of weblogs: personal vs. topical.

For instance, it may be worth assuming that many of the weblogs that Eric reads are very focused, topical, more technology-based, and might follow a particular story in depth over time. In that case, having to constantly backtrack to retrieve pertinent bits of information after a few days could get exasperating.

However, this could be seen very differently when dealing with weblogs like mine (or those of many, many other people across the ‘net), where the content matter isn’t nearly as tightly-focused. The chances of one post directly referring to another immediately before (or even two or three posts before) are slimmer, as the topics tend to shift wildly from post to post. In that case, then, it could be argued that the temporal ordering of the posts might not matter at all.

Obviously, when looked at from that perspective the analogy to paragraph order that I played with when I made my initial post breaks down completely — while altering the paragraph order can render a post nearly incomprehensible, if a weblog is made up of a lot of more or less random observations on anything and everything, does it really matter whether my latest really obscure geek joke comes before or after my lastest experiment with fan fiction?

If users are implemented and tracked on a website, a blog in this case, track the time of last visit. Then, when the user returns, in chronological order (least recent at top) display the entries that have been written since the user has last visited. After that, put the rest of the entries in reverse chronological order (recent at top) and in a different framing or something to differentiate them.

Theoretically easy, probably, with PHP and cookies. However, wouldn’t switching temporality mid-stream just make things more confusing? Best to pick one and stick with it, I’d think.

The only “natural-feeling” blog I’ve read that uses chronological ordering was that of a dead person.

I’m not dead yet! I feel happy! I feel happy! I feel…<THWACK>…

It’s like setting up your page to please someone who has never been to your site before, as opposed to making it easier for your regular readers. Just doesn’t make any sense.

But if you’ve built up regular readers, then wouldn’t they be at least somewhat likely to stick around after a format switch? And if a new format would make it easier for new visitors, then wouldn’t they be more likely to make a return visit later on? I’m not so sure that’s a bad argument, really.

If looking for the “how”, an “older on top” order may best fit my needs, and that is usually the case when I’m reading readers’ comments which often happen to be follow-ups to previous comments.

I hadn’t even thought considering comment order in all of this. Funny, really — when reading a weblog, the “newest first” order feels right to me (whether that’s due to actual ease of use, or merely to to accepted habit), but on the few places I’ve been to where comments are presented “newest first”, I find it annoying to have to scroll down to the bottom of the window to read the converstion coherently.

I think this goes back to what I touched on earlier: the difference between a single topic thread (i.e., comment threads or highly-focused weblogs) that would prompt a more strict chronological order and multiple different topics where the order is less critical.

Fun to bandy about ideas, though, and exploring the “why” of some of the habits/trends/accepted methods that we are used to.