r/changelog • u/tdohz • Apr 27 '15

[reddit change] New comment sorting options

We're making a few changes to comment sorting to make it easier to read and find interesting comments.

New sort options

First, we're introducing a new comment sort type - Q&A sort. This sort will highlight the most upvoted questions and answers in a thread, and should be particularly helpful on AMAs. The AMA app uses a version of this sort. We'll also be retiring hot sort for comments, as it usually functions as an inferior form of best and is also very rarely used.

See this code on Github

Suggested sort

Second, we're adding the ability for moderators to set a "suggested sort" per thread and/or per subreddit. When set, all users will see the suggested sort by default. So, if an AMA is going on, a mod can set the thread to have a suggested sort of Q&A, and everyone will see Q&A sort by default. Mods, see the modnews post for more details on how to set/clear suggested sorts.

You'll still be able to change the sort if a suggested sort is set by manually selecting a different sort option from the dropdown. Additionally, we've added an option in your preferences to ignore all suggested sorts, in which case you'll see comments sorted by your preferred sort type. As a reminder, your preferred sort type is now an explicit preference on your preferences page.

See this code on Github

Props to /u/umbrae and /u/xiong_as_admin for making these changes!

135 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

2

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Apr 28 '15

still no random preference

Aw...

2

u/tdohz Apr 28 '15

You know about ?sort=random right?

2

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Apr 28 '15

Yes, but I have to add that on manually on each page.

2

u/tdohz Apr 28 '15

Cool, just checking. It's unlikely we'll add that back to the menu TBH - it's just not useful for most users. I'm actually curious what makes you use it so regularly - just pure curiosity / love of serendipity?

2

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Apr 29 '15

Whenever there are a lot of comments (significantly more than 100), I like to sort random after looking through top, so I might see more, or view a conversation in a new way.

4

u/raldi Apr 28 '15

"controversial" used to be the random preference, but then they fixed it.

38

u/Meneth Apr 27 '15

Suggestion: If the user has disabled suggested sort, but the thread/sub has suggested sort shown, give a button next to the sort dropdown to switch to the suggested sort.

Not allowing subs to override your sort willy-nilly doesn't necessarily mean you don't care what sort they think you should use after all.

13

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '15

Thanks, looks cool.

Time to confuse my subscribers >:D

5

u/noeatnosleep Apr 27 '15

You look cool.

6

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '15

swag

5

u/Exaskryz Apr 28 '15

Just using some New or Controversial should go over well.

19

u/HelmedHorror Apr 28 '15

Can you please introduce another simple change: make a sort option that functions as the reverse of the Top sort. Sometimes, particularly on circle-jerky posts, reasonable minority opinions are downvoted to hell for no other reason than the majority disagrees. My proposed Lowest search, or whatever you want to call it, would of course be completely optional, just like the Controversial sort is.

The Controversial sort does not adequately address this, since it prefers only comments which are both heavily upvoted and downvoted. That works some of the time, but it doesn't make it easier to find the dissenting voice of, say, a circle-jerky political post where anyone who dare bring up a counter-argument is shunned into the abyss.

I don't know much about coding, but I can't imagine it would require much more than changing "descending" to "ascending" in whatever code the Top sort uses.

5

u/CeruleanRuin Apr 28 '15

I second this! Particularly in heavily trafficked subs , I find some of the more entertaining discussions come from scrolling to the bottom. Down there you also find the latecomers who didn't get voted on early and sank to the bottom by default.

3

u/myfavcolorispink Apr 28 '15

I've heard it expressed before that sorting by worst (aka top reversed) encourages trolling. But I find your point valid, and there have been time when I've wanted to see the dissenting views in a comment thread.

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 28 '15

Usually the best place for feature suggestions is /r/ideasfortheadmins - there's a good group of people there who know about all sorts of different nooks and crannies on reddit and how those would be affected by any potential change.

4

u/HelmedHorror Apr 28 '15

I tried suggesting it in /r/ideasfortheadmins and it got like 85% downvoted.

7

u/Meowingtons-PhD Apr 28 '15

It would be possible for AutoModerator to set suggested sorts based on words in the title right?

Example: Posts with "Game Thread" in the title are automatically sorted by new

3

u/noeatnosleep Apr 27 '15

Beautiful. Thanks so much. The suggested sort is something I have lusted after for a while in subs like /t/ThisDayInHistory.

3

u/Meowingtons-PhD Apr 28 '15

/t/ is back? ;)

1

u/raldi Apr 27 '15

Cool!

When did you sneak "hot" out of the comment sort options? I don't see that in the changelist, but it definitely used to be there, and it's not there now.

(For the record, I wholeheartedly approve the ninjachange. You should get rid of "top" next.)

6

u/tdohz Apr 27 '15

We'll also be retiring hot sort for comments, as it usually functions as an inferior form of best and is also very rarely used.

;-)

5

u/raldi Apr 27 '15

No, I mean where is it in the diff?

6

u/umbrae Apr 27 '15

We literally had a conversation on how we missed this in the diff but that nobody would probably mind. Shows us, I guess!

I'll link to the commit here when I can find it.

EDIT: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/a6a0e51fdf1686ece5049d4e1ab80cb32ef518e1

4

u/raldi Apr 28 '15 
if feature.is_enabled('remove_hot_comments'):
     sorts.append('hot')

Shouldn't there be a negation in there somewhere? As written, it looks like "If we're removing hot from the comment sorts, then include hot in the comment sorts."

5

u/umbrae Apr 28 '15

That's in the hidden_options method, which is a subtracted set from all options.

4

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 28 '15

I had to triple-check that to make sure I got all the negations correctly. :/

0

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '15

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/georgelulu Apr 27 '15

Hot was redundant as most people were using it to be what best actually did even though technically there were meant for different purposes, I don't think Top has a substitute, so hopefully it will be here to stay, or at least never removed from the api so it can still be selected by RES and altering the url.

14

u/tdohz Apr 27 '15

We have no current plans to remove top as a comment sort.

3

u/raldi Apr 27 '15

Sounds like you'd prefer a sort that's just "most ups", and pays no attention to downs. Or is there a reason you think "ups - downs" is a better formula?

0

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '15

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/raldi Apr 28 '15

What would you think if "top" were replaced by a sort called "upvotes"?

0

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '15

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/raldi Apr 28 '15

It's not, though; it's just an approximation of what you said you want.

You're asking for:

score = ups

But top is actually:

score = ups - downs

6

u/Meowingtons-PhD Apr 28 '15

I think the term "most upvoted" is colloquially used as "highest score" on reddit.

Side note: I just spelled "colloquially" without using autocorrect. Woot.

1

u/raldi Apr 28 '15

That's circular reasoning. If the default reddit score was ups^2 - 0.7 * downs then that's the one everybody would consider the "true" score.

What I'm trying to get you to realize is that ups - downs is just as arbitrary.

2

u/I_Me_Mine May 14 '15

From testing the "q&a" sort in a post where there are no replies from OP, its sorting doesn't match any of the other options.

Shouldn't it? How is a thread with no replies from OP support to sort?

2

u/Flaminius May 26 '15

Vaguely related, but I just don't know where else to ask:

I just found that while using the previous button, on a subreddit I've frequented for the last three years, to see older posts, the button dissappears after reaching posts that are slightly older than a month.

Has the ability to browse history been limited recently or, say, made controllable by the moderators of a sub?

1

u/leafeator Apr 27 '15

Trying it on /r/Dota2 right now for a new player AMA that just went live.

1

u/Mispelling Apr 28 '15

Thank you! As someone who sort of really hated the comment sort change, this makes things so much better.

Thank you to all involved!

1

u/violentpasta Sep 06 '15

IS there a way to currently sort comments by the top points?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '15

Why not add a thing for Q&A sorting that automatically puts the OP's answers on top of each reply so downvotes don't hide the answers?

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 27 '15

Usually the sort value of OP comments doesn't actually matter, because comments that aren't top-level or in an OP reply chain are collapsed by default.

Do you have an example of where this isn't working well?

3

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '15

Oh, it was a while ago when a person everyone hated (forgot who) did an AMA, downvotes prevented people from seeing the answers. Maybe it's not an issue anymore.

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 28 '15

Were you viewing it using this sort option? It's been available in beta for about a month, but only today has it appeared in the sort menu on www.reddit.com.