Arch Linux

shulamy

Member

From: israel

Registered: 2010-09-11

Posts: 465

topics display

is it possible to change the sort order of "new" topics

like in the "search" page ?

ezik

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: topics display

Not that I know of. But, the point of the New topics section is to sort by the latest post anyways. Why would you want to change the sort order for that?

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,330

Website

Re: topics display

x33a, "new" posts are (generally) not paginated.  It is not a list of all posts in order of how new they are, rather it is a list of posts that are new since the user's last visit.  Frequently there are only a dozen or so in the "new" list for me.

I like the descending order, but I do see a potential problem that can come from it: we* tend to focus on the top of that list, so if 10 new posts come in in rapid succession, the first of those ends up being burried and will not work it's way up to the top of the list.  We bias our attention to new threads in the opposite way as those annoying hold messages: user questions are *not* addressed in the order in which they are received.

This has the unfortunate consequence of incentivizing inappropriate "bumping".

This thread led me to consider the implications of this ordering, and while I still like the descending order, I now make sure I occasionally start at the bottom of the list too.  An increasing order would facilitate this.

But in any case, this should go upstream to the forum software people (I think it's fluxBB, or was it phpBB?).

* I do this, and I assume that most people are similar.  It's not really just an assumption - it is what the psychological evidence supports for similar contexts.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

shulamy

Member

From: israel

Registered: 2010-09-11

Posts: 465

Re: topics display

thanks @Trilby

i want at least an option to reverse the order  ( increasing).

ezik