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A place to check on the weather around Unfettered Mind. Is it rainy, stormy or fair?

This is a place to offer feedback and make suggestions for changes and improvements.

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At 7:22am on December 8, 2009, Ann Braun said…: Morticia, I'd guess that what you noticed about the changes in the chronological order of Trevor's Blog may have something to do with recent changes in Ning. I've just discovered that there are a number of new admin features On of these is the ability to select the chronological order for comments. The choices are:

*Always display newest comments on the top of the wall
* Always display oldest comments on the top of the wall
* Set comment order per feature

Under Set comment order per feature there is now an option to decide whether oldest or newest comment or reply appears on top for Blogs, Events, Groups, Application Reviews, Photos, Profiles and Videos

At 3:04pm on December 6, 2009, Ann Braun said…: I'll see if I can find out from Ning whether there's been a recent change in how the blog module functions.

To sum up what we've learned about the differences in how Ning's blog and forum modules work:

- Comments to blogs appear in reverse chronological order (most recent post at the top); threading of comments is not available in Blogs .

- Comments to forum topics appear in chronological order (oldest post at the top). Threading is available which means that people can post replies to the original topic itself, or to a comments posted by others.

At 3:24am on December 6, 2009, Morticia (Not My Real Name) said…: Your reply makes sense, Ann, but up until the point where I made my original comment (complaint) here, Trevor's blog post 'Reflections on Unfettered Mind' had been running chronologically and then suddenly it switched. So there was a deliberate change made somewhere.

At 4:04pm on November 28, 2009, Ann Braun said…: I just wrote a fairly elaborate follow-up to Fivebells most recent comment but when I clicked on Add Comment most of it was lost because I exceeded the character limit of 2000! (there's a little counter at the bottom right of the comment window that clocks the number of characters remaining as you write). This is my second attempt and I'll try to make my addition to Fivebells' findings more concise.

Blogs and forums are set up differently by Ning to reflect a difference in the intention behind these. Forums are structured to support discussion -- which means that contributions appear in chronological order and threading is available so that the discussion can branch off in different directions and so that many people can interact.

As Ning says in its help files: "your blog is all about you" -- the idea behind a blog is that you've got something to say and have the option of doing this serially over a series of blog entries. You have the option when creating a blog post, of allowing comments or not and of moderating comments or not.

This means that it's important to consider what you intend when selecting which modality to use. If your intention is to foster discussion about a topic or question -- the forum is the better choice. If you wish to write about something while offering your readers the option of commenting and providing feedback to you, then the blog is the more suitable choice.

Recently some blogs have morfed into discussions -- these have become difficult to follow because the blog structure isn’t set up to support this.

Does this help, Morticia?

p.s. as Fivebells points out, comments on profile pages are set up like those on blogs for the same reason -- a profile page is about you.

At 3:52am on November 28, 2009, Morticia (Not My Real Name) said…: Thank you in advance for deleting the 'gift' thingy. Just clutter.

At 9:23pm on November 25, 2009, fivebells said…: I see the discussion comments in forward-chronological order, and comments on profiles and blog posts in the reverse order.

At 1:41pm on November 25, 2009, Ann Braun said…: I'm not sure why this was happening, Morticia. I've just checked and the forum seems to be working properly -- the order of posts is chronological. Are you still having this problem? Is anyone else experiencing what Morticia describes?

At 6:30am on November 11, 2009, Morticia (Not My Real Name) said…: All of a sudden all the entries are in reverse order. Is this a Ning-wide thing, or did someone here do that? Can it be undone?
It means: I read a long post, to the bottom. Then I have to scroll up to the top again. Then I'm at the bottom of the next message. I have to scroll up to the top of it. Then I read it from beginning to end. Then I have to scroll up to the top of it again... then I'm at the bottom of the next message... so I have to scroll up to the top of it...
There are page numbers at the bottom of each page. If you want to jump to the end of a forum you can use them. Could we please return to chronological order?

At 5:28am on August 31, 2009, Morticia (Not My Real Name) said…: Well that was very kind, generous and thoughtful of whoever, and I'm grateful.

At 4:27pm on August 30, 2009, Ann Braun said…: Going ad free costs USD $24.95/month. Somebody made a donation that will cover the cost until Jan 2010.