Any ideas?
Eric’s put out a call for ideas for alternative formats that might both satisfy web usage habits and allow for a more temporally sensical page structure. I’m quite interested in seeing what, if anything, he comes up with, and finding out how workable any proposed solutions are (if at all).
However, I can’t really see merely swapping things around on the front page so that new posts show up at the bottom and scroll upwards, either. While it might make more chronological sense, the “most recent at the top” format is so ingrained in our heads that I think flipping the main page into true chronological order might be too confusing, disorienting, and generally more trouble than it’s worth.
I have to admit, I’m a bit lost on alternatives — in fact, the only viable alternative I can think of off the top of my head is adopting a single-post front page format (such as Marc Pilgrim uses, or as I do on WüdiVisions). My issues with this are simply that not all of my posts are long enough to give any “weight” to the front page, and when I post multiple times over the course of a day, any single post might have anywhere from a few hours to as little as a few minutes on the front page before it would disappear into the archives.
So what sort of solutions might there be out there? Right now, both my main page and my monthly archive pages are “backwards” — forwards by current web usage, but not chronologically. While I could fairly easily switch my archive pages around to display the beginning of the month at the top of the page and progress downwards (as Eric has done in his archives), that doesn’t necessarily work as well for the front page.
…our collective behavior when it comes to reading weblogs is a stunning example of an entire community adopting hugely counter-intuitive behaviors in order to conform to a received truth (that weblog entries should be ordered most to least recent). …if you read a twenty-chapter book the way you read weblogs, you’d start at the beginning of chapter 20, read it, skip back to the beginning of 19, read that, and so on until you finally worked your way back to chapter 1 and finished the book. How much sense does that make? Close to none.
I’ve noticed this myself from time to time, and admittedly, it can get quite frustrating. Not so much on normal day-to-day browsing if you’re able to keep track of any given site fairly frequently, but when playing the catch-up game after being out of the loop for a bit. Once you load a site, it’s not at all uncommon for people to refer back to previous posts, which you may have missed, so you have to backtrack to read them, then jump back to the current post…not that bad in the short-term, but aggravating after a while.
Here’s what I mean: the most-recent-first format is broken. No other form of written communication works that way, and in fact almost no form of human communication works like that. There’s a reason why. Reading a weblog is like watching Memento, which I agree was a cool movie, except all weblogs are like that so it’s as if every single movie released in the past seven or eight years was structured exactly like Memento. …If weblog entries were ordered like the weblogs themselves, this would be the next-to-last paragraph, and the one above would be below it instead.
Weblogs are “temporally broken”, according to Eric Meyer.
Okay, yes, I deliberately swapped the paragraph order around in the main part of the post. If you’d rather not try to run through the mental gymnastics of re-ordering the paragraphs, here’s the “correct” version. ;) Weblogs are “temporally broken”, according to Eric Meyer.
Here’s what I mean: the most-recent-first format is broken. No other form of written communication works that way, and in fact almost no form of human communication works like that. There’s a reason why. Reading a weblog is like watching Memento, which I agree was a cool movie, except all weblogs are like that so it’s as if every single movie released in the past seven or eight years was structured exactly like Memento. …If weblog entries were ordered like the weblogs themselves, this would be the next-to-last paragraph, and the one above would be below it instead.
I’ve noticed this myself from time to time, and admittedly, it can get quite frustrating. Not so much on normal day-to-day browsing if you’re able to keep track of any given site fairly frequently, but when playing the catch-up game after being out of the loop for a bit. Once you load a site, it’s not at all uncommon for people to refer back to previous posts, which you may have missed, so you have to backtrack to read them, then jump back to the current post…not that bad in the short-term, but aggravating after a while.
…our collective behavior when it comes to reading weblogs is a stunning example of an entire community adopting hugely counter-intuitive behaviors in order to conform to a received truth (that weblog entries should be ordered most to least recent). …if you read a twenty-chapter book the way you read weblogs, you’d start at the beginning of chapter 20, read it, skip back to the beginning of 19, read that, and so on until you finally worked your way back to chapter 1 and finished the book. How much sense does that make? Close to none.
So what sort of solutions might there be out there? Right now, both my main page and my monthly archive pages are “backwards” — forwards by current web usage, but not chronologically. While I could fairly easily switch my archive pages around to display the beginning of the month at the top of the page and progress downwards (as Eric has done in his archives), that doesn’t necessarily work as well for the front page.
I have to admit, I’m a bit lost on alternatives — in fact, the only viable alternative I can think of off the top of my head is adopting a single-post front page format (such as Marc Pilgrim uses, or as I do on WüdiVisions). My issues with this are simply that not all of my posts are long enough to give any “weight” to the front page, and when I post multiple times over the course of a day, any single post might have anywhere from a few hours to as little as a few minutes on the front page before it would disappear into the archives.
However, I can’t really see merely swapping things around on the front page so that new posts show up at the bottom and scroll upwards, either. While it might make more chronological sense, the “most recent at the top” format is so ingrained in our heads that I think flipping the main page into true chronological order might be too confusing, disorienting, and generally more trouble than it’s worth.
Eric’s put out a call for ideas for alternative formats that might both satisfy web usage habits and allow for a more temporally sensical page structure. I’m quite interested in seeing what, if anything, he comes up with, and finding out how workable any proposed solutions are (if at all).
Any ideas?
What about newspapers or telephone calls?
The limitation here is to strictly see this as a diarist’s medium, which it might very well be. Telephone calls, even from strangers are very much a thing of the moment. If it’s necessary to bring up past information during the conversation then do so. Linkage from your top page would do the same thing provided you set up some context.
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.
Also it says to me that the average reader is too stupid go look at your archives. I know from merely reading my owns stats that this isn’t true.
There are quite a few other forms of communication which place most recent on top – or first to view – as opposed to the order in which they were written or recorded. Telephone answering machines work this way. Seismic recorders work this way. Email forwardings work this way. Associated Press wire machines and any “teletype” system in general works this way. Online bank records work this way (your most recent “cashed” check shows up at the top, your most recent paid bill, your most recent ATM withdrawal, et al.). Engineering log records are always placed in books so the last log entry is at the front and thence backwards to the first.
So, I am not so certain that there is a thesis here that “web logs” are backwards. They are not. There are any number of associated “reporting style” event-logs which work the same way.
I contest the original comment. There’s nothing “unnatural” nor “wrong” about placing the most recent log entry at the top and scrolling backwards to find preceeding entries. It is as natural to some as it seems “unnatural” to others.
To me, this is someone arguing that vanilla is better than chocolate. When, in fact, both are equally valid flavors and frontward/backward are equally valid methods of posting and retrieving ‘log” entries.
Heh, I’d thought the start was written properly, but I was wondering who on earth ‘Eric’ was and where the link to the source was.
Oh, Eric Meyer. Ok, then! :P
Apart from the examples listed by others above, there’s another issue here: why would I want to catch up with everything someone’s said about their doormat? I contest that claim the average weblog visitor wants to see, in order, all that has passed since their last visit. The upside-down format may have contributed to the sense of ‘what’s new is what’s important’, after being caused by it, but the fact is that today the weblog world handles other content the same way it handles memes and news–“hey look at this–read what I have to say about it (which is in response to what someone else said about it, that I’ve linked to and quoted), read the comments and add one if you wish, follow the trackbacks–and oh, here’s the older stuff.”
I’ve got an odd proposition, although it makes plenty of sense to me: 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.
The only “natural-feeling” blog I’ve read that uses chronological ordering was that of a dead person.
I’d pretty much have to agree with most people here… If you want to read EVERYTHING a person has written, then yes, you would want it in chronological order… but I think a fair amountweblog content is written as “one-offs”… entries meant to be taken for what they are and that’s it… or, if they are a running commentary there is usually links to previous entries, for catch-up purposes… OR, the author may just not give a crap if you know what they’re talking about, as they’re writing for their own reasons. Personally, I would find it aggravating as hell to have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the latest posts. 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.
I appreciate different orders, depending upon what I’m reading.
Because I’m not a regular visitor, my first interest is usually about “what is hot”, which in my mind is what is happening “now”: thus, when I first enter any web place, I’d like to find the most recent items on top of everything, because I wouldn’t want to scroll down in order to be able to find what I’m looking for.
Then, depending upon the topic I’ve found, I may (and sometimes do) want to know “why” something happened, or “how” it grew up. If looking for the “why”, a wise use of links and hipertext is all what I need to find the necessary references to past history and/or explanations (in blogs too), and I’m generally satisfied with them. 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.
And I have a neutral position when I’m simply browsing through old archives, with a slight preference for chronological order because then I feel I’m reading something very close to somebody’s diary.
The fact that this way I’m not following printed paper reading rules doesn’t bother me at all, as the Internet is a different communication medium.
I agree with pops on this one. I consider weblogs to be “newspapers” about the person who wrote them. I go to these blogs to get fresh insight on their lives or a differnt take on a current issue. It comes down to the fact that I’m simply more interested in current events and I don’t want to have to dig around to find them.
Thanks all. :) I thought there might be some interesting comments out there…
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. ;)
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.
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!
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).
No, sorry. Vanilla is better than chocolate. ;)
(Kidding — I like ’em both.)
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?
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.
I’m not dead yet! I feel happy! I feel happy! I feel…<THWACK>…
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.
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.
Your comments and those of others have prompted a new thought on the whole idea of “frontness” or “backness” or “left to right” or “right to left.” And that is the notion of threaded weblogs. A fair number of sites offer comments in a threaded manner – some of the threading software or coding is more effective than others – but the point is that one can follow a particular sub-idea or alternative-sub-thread more easily because they are set back like the old Harvard numbering scheme.
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.
As I said, a differentiation would have to be made visible between chronologically and reverse chronologically ordered posts.
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.)
“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”.“
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.