I have enabled threaded comments on this site, which means that replies to comments are placed immediately below the comment being replied to. But because of comment indentation there is a limit on the depth of such comments after which no more replies can be threaded in this way.
Another independent choice we have is to place new comments at the top or bottom of the pages on which they appear (i.e. reading top to bottom in chronological order or the reverse).
But there is a relationship between threading and top level comment positioning since if we put new comments at the top, the chronological order of threads is top to bottom while that of new comments is bottom to top.
If we put new comments at the bottom, threaded exchanges that have reached the depth limit can be easily continued by starting a new thread which will appear below the thread in question. Although there may well be other top level threads between the two related threads, often this will not happen and the continued thread will be directly below that it is related to. If, however, we place new threads at the top we are guaranteed to disrupt the continuity of ‘deep’ threads.
Because of this interaction between threading and new comment placement, I prefer to place new threads at the bottom rather than the top when threading is enabled. And I favour threading as I believe it helps a lot in reading and understanding the exchanges that are an essential part of our teaser discussions.
But we can place threads in either position and we can also turn threading off completely so its up to us to decide what we want to do!
So now is the time to let me know what you would prefer!
Sunday Times Teasers Discussion Group 