Comments on Articles

[Nelsaidi]

Hey,
I've got a few suggestions for the way comments are displayed on articles, which are linked in. The header says latests comments, then shows some comments, but gives no indication as to how many total comments there are. Yes, there is the small box at the top corner which says how many comments there are, but its a mere orange box with a tooltip. Second, only 3 comments are displayed. Whilst this is probably to encourage people to use the forums (which would work better if the reader knew there were more comments to read by clicking), there should be more. It would also give the impression that there are more comments, which I guess is good. Finally, the order in which the comments are listed, at the moment I feel is slightly weird. No sign of the order is present, and I often find myself confused when reading them on the article. Perhaps it would be better to show the newest at the top, since if there are more than 3 comments then quotes and discussions within the topic are not made clear and lead to confusion.

So, in short:
1) Show more visibly how many comments there are for a certain article
2) Show a little bit more comments
3) Consider changing the chronological ordering of comments

Thanks

[shaithis]

Would be nice to have a down arrow that expands another 10-or-so comments out each time it's pressed...

[jim]

I'd missed this previously, but thirded. This would be a great feature.

I've always found the way that discussions get cut off a bit odd, and it can make the comments appear really unusual sometimes - if they're in reference to something that someone else has said previously.

I would only comment directly on the article if I was the first or second person to respond, any more than that and I suspect I'll just be repeating someone else's views and go to the forums instead, which is I'm guessing what Steve/DR are steering away from with the direct commenting function.

It's great, a really useful addition, but this would push it to the next level (imo)

[FatalSaviour]

And fourthed :-).

As snootyjim mentions, the cut-off often doesn't reflect the entire discussion very well, and although I'm all for keeping the articles themselves as clean as possible, an "Expand" function would be very useful.