Very cool.

A couple additional tweaks/suggestions.

1) Indent the replies. At least 1 place. Then you can start using the alignment for the replies to replies.

2) Allow for sticky expand all.

3) Allow more than 20 posts per page.

Is there a site-wide setting for Classic View? I just want everything I see to be Classic, not have to change it for every post.

@mbouchard: BAH, and an edit button.

Meant to add to the 1) above. Over at Lifehacker someone created a greasemonkey script that indents the replies. But since I am using Chrome right now, that won't work and like the previous threading greasemonkey script it will probably break every time Gawker tweaks their comments.

much better, thanks!

Awesome. During yesterdays release, I was excited and positive, until the first real post I was trying to read/comment on, I realized it was a nightmare to follow. This will be better.

Thanks for listening to the feedback. Much better now. Though get on that indenting and posts per page ;)

Looks good so far.

Catching an STD is new and different but that does not mean that it is a good thing. Moral of my story is stop Fing with the format.

Also let us see more that 20 post per page or we will all be posting the same thing 5 other people have already posted.

@savvy999: Unfortunately not.

yes much better to follow comments, esp. when you are coming back and the order's all over the place... sweet.

And I agree with commenter #1; indent all replies after the initial one a space, and then just rely on the left/right icon from there on. it works in its current iteration, but it could be a bit mo' betta

Much better. I'd also suggest as an improved visual cue differentiating the icons for "new discussion" and "reply to this comment." Maybe just reverse the reply icon. I'd also add space between the last comment and the generic reply to highlight that you're not replying, but adding a new main level comment.

@Jonbo298:

will anyone reply anymore?

@KlausKinsky:
I will.

Glad to see chronological comments again. the other format was very confusing.

I liked seeing comments without having to click a button. Bring that back.

To add to the above (indenting, higher # of posts), could we get this:

continue reading discussions › 1 2 3 4 » [1..20 of 85]

Where the bolded #'s jump to specific pages?

@KlausKinsky: Yeah, replying seems to be discouraged because if you reply your comment is hidden by default. Why are the conversations collapsed by default? I don't want to have to click a ton of pluses per thread. Also echoing the need for more than 20 comments per page.

I second (or third) the indentation and expansion requests. Thanks for not taking our concerns with the comments "very seriously."

Much thanks, Ben!

Out of curiosity, could we choose how many coments to see on each page? Or would that cause too much code? :)

Very cool. Nay chance for a feature request: to allow comment rating, where other users could rate others' comments? This could lead to a UI where one or two "featured" highly rated comments could be called out before a "main" comment section like is shown now. Or different commenters could end up having an aggregate rating based on the quality of their comments.

@mbouchard:

Also, how about making the boxes smaller? They take up way too much real estate on the page and (for me) make it harder to read comments quickly.

Being able to save one's preferred viewing settings is definitely also a plus.

@KlausKinsky: I don't think so :P

Much better. The way it was before, when posts weren't chronological, really messed with tracking the posts throughout the day.

Yay! This is so awesome! Thanks for listening to us.

Yeah, there should absolutely be more than 20 per page. Even more than 100 -- people don't tend to read past the first set, and the code makes the pages load slowly so I don't either.

I like keeping the posts chronologically as it makes it easier to follow conversations. I also want to add my voice to the people wanting to see more than 20 comments per page.

Other than that, I think it looks spiffy.

Classic view is still my fav, so please don't take away that option from us.

Only thing is I have to select classic view everytime I click on a post, or make a comment. Anyway to allow us to just switch to classic view one time and have it stay?

The behavior of the reply box is messed up, too. If you go to a story and scroll all the way to the bottom, you see a reply box. It looks like a "new discussion" box, but it's actually a reply to box for the last comment. When you post, your comment gets an "@commenter" link that hangs below your comments.

That last box should be treated like a new comment unless you specifically hit the "reply" icon in the comment above it.

Chronological is good ... replies being hidden are bad.

The reason to post anything on any forum is to be read.

People will generally not click multiple times to expand multiple replies threads. Hence the majority of replies will not be read, defeating the purpose of posting a reply at all.

Of course, the reason why you hid them is so that people don't use the "reply" feature to get their "message" bumped to the first page. (reply bombing the first post, regardless of whether your replying to that person or not).

Although the idea of having replies attached to the message was well intentioned, it's not well thought out. Users here will use whatever method gets their messages "read".

@Meggers: Also, could it be set up to automatically expand? Maybe a profile option so that it is up to the individual?
I have IE7 and for whatever reason, it doesn't want to expand when I click the expand all option.

I think I'll reply the old fashioned way by just typing @johndoe:

Don't auto-collapse, it means more clicking that I just don't have the patients for.

The replies need to be indented, even if just by the tiniest bit. If indenting is impossible with the current design, then at least have them shaded differently.

@MikeF74: I bet you'll see more people responding like the way I just did. (by typing {a}@johndoe:{/a}...) Or not even worrying about the highlighting and just typing it like that.

My question to The Consumerist is why they allow comments & suggestions for the comment section, but when they put the ugly banners on the top of the page of the top news stories, they did not allow comments?

(where of course I would have let them know that taking up 1/2 the page with banners of what else is on the page is wasteful and a pain to have to scroll down to read a news story.

More than 20 comments per page please! Other than that classic format is your friend.

@MikeF74: And please add a 2-minute edit feature so I don't have to wallow in my own stupidity staring at "patients" instead of "patience".

@Bladefist: @jurisenpai: very good ideas. i think having the boxes smaller so you can read through comments faster is key. i also agree that there should be a user-defined posts-per-page, including an infinity where it does them all.

collapsing the comments by default is aso a great idea.

I hate "collapsed by default". I don't want to have to keep clicking and clicking to read all the comments.

@mbouchard: Agreed. Indent the replies. At least from the first level, if not more.

White space is good for readability, but now there's too much of it, which is bad for readability!

This is still not as functional as the classic view, in my opinion. Also, the limiting to 20 per page is really annoying.

what about on digg?

Yay chronological comments, it makes much more sense to display them that way.

But please reconsider your decision to collapse responses. All that will do is keep responses from being seen, which in turn will deter people from replying to comments... defeating the biggest benefit of your comment-redesign!

And you've really got to go back to displaying 100 comments at a time. You might have noticed, this is a popular site, and some posts get lots of comments. Why hide them by making people click and click? Limiting it to 20 comments per page hurts everyone and benefits no one.

@snoop-blog: I was clicking around on Gawker and some people are doing that but then it just gets confusing if "johndoe" has commented 20 times in that one post. Granted for Consumerist, there just aren't as many responses as there might be at Gawker so maybe it will be easier here.

Crazy new fangled technology.

@snoop-blog: But then I have to search the page for which johndoe comment you're talking about, which is kind of annoying.

You can always click on Expand All to make all of the replies visible. However I think both 'Classic view' and 'Expand All' options would be better if we could set it as our default.

@MikeF74: The replies are already shaded differently. The original comment has a grey bar at the top and the reply doesn't. Also, the shape of the box is mirrored for replies.

@vladthepale I think the more people that reply this way I've been talking about, the better chance of them doing away with the collapsable reply's.

Arg! foiled by my own ignorance! Oh well thus is lige! <-- intentional typo.

On the "indent replies" stream of thought, it would be nice, but I read on one of the other sites yesterday, Lifehacker I think, that replies will have the avatar/lil no avatar pic on the right side, as opposed to the left side of the original post.

Once I grasped that it made more sense.

Chronological order, that just seems to work better.

Replies should probably be open by default. Being closed makes me not want to worry so much about them and i have found good info in replies before.
Well, sometimes. ;)

1. "Start new discussion" sounds like starting a whole new blog posting, not a parent-less comment. That wording should be changed.

2. "Expand all" doesn't hold between pages in the same comments thread. I consider this a bug. If I clicked "Expand all" on one page of comments, it's safe to assume I want it on subsequent pages too.