Dear Blog Designers:

[smarriveurr]

OK, seriously. Maybe I'm just really dense, or something. I must need to RTFM, RTFAQ, JFGI, or CUWANAITTRHMSRO 1. But seriously, when I discover a blog, and want to look at the archives, why do you insist on showing the several-year-old entries Last-In-First-Out on every page? Why is there not a "read this like a human being would" option on any

Comments

[ragnvaeig]

I'd love to see the same thing. Or at least a feed option that'd do it from my last login, so I could catch up after Pennsic with the hundreds of entries by reading the various related stories in order.

[laurensa]

It's not just you, I find it aggravating as well. I want to start at the beginning, not the end!

[smarriveurr]

Exactly. I understand that the last in, first out arrangement is superior when you're trying to keep up on a blog you read, because you're checking fairly often... but there are people out there who write informational blogs, people who write ongoing articles, and they should be read in order. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask for, just to be able to look at archives in advancing chronological order.

[desh]

It may not make sense absent context, but it's become so paradigmatic* that it would probably confuse people to have it any other way. I agree that at least having the option would be nice, though, even if I wouldn't use it. The back-and-forth scroll is mere muscle memory at this point; I don't even know I'm doing it.

*The main point of this comment was just so I could use one of my favorite words. It sounds like a pneumatic shovel from an 80s infomercial, but it's so much more!

[smarriveurr]

I'm sure if we could just get some groupstorming in effect, we could envisualize a paradigm shift...1

It's not muscle memory for me, at all, and in the case of lengthier blog articles, it becomes annoyingly obtrusive - particularly if the scroll up spoils what was supposed to be a surprise in the latter part of the text. I imagine it wouldn't see a lot of use, but I'd like to think the coding investment would pay off in added usability. You could certainly market to anyone who writes a "blog" that represents sequential articles.

1 - I too like the word paradigm. Also, buzzwords in general.

In Agreement with Desh

[ladymockingbird]

I remember, once upon a time where one had to read top down, it was during the age of snail fast page loads and I HATED having to hit next page 50 or 60 times before I could get to the latest, because even back then I was religious about checking in regularly and had already seen all of the old posts.

I have the scroll down, then back up thing in my muscle memory too now. Although, you may have noticed that comments go oldest to newest, but blog entries are the reverse.

On the other hand, At work everything gets filed newest on top, if filed by date rather than by some other index. (Depends on the sort of record we are discussing.)

So, it would be nice to have the option, but I'm not likely to use it either.

[smarriveurr]

Or going to other people's houses!

[smarriveurr]

See, the forum issue is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, and one that I think is quite possibly best approached in "Plot summary pages" or "character summary pages." If I were about to mod a new MORP forum, I'd probably mandate a weekly "character arc summary" for the purpose of getting new people involved.

Likewise, it would be great if STs kept detailed notes on plots they're running in their own sections. *cough* Not that I ever had a problem with things like that in the past. ;)