In the latest release of WordPress, a Latest Comments block has been added. PG has dropped it in this post right below this explanation. It shows the latest five comments in reverse chronological order.
Among other things, this means that if someone leaves a comment to a post that appeared two days ago, that comment will show up as the Latest Comment, above a comment made earlier on a post that first appeared an hour ago.
PG doesn’t think this would be objectionable (although, like all comments, it is subject to potential abuse). As with anything that appears on TPV, PG can be informed of any concerns a visitor has about any content via the Contact link on the top menu bar. PG can disenfranchise chronic abusers whose words appear anywhere on TPV by eliminating their accounts or taking other steps to help keep them off the blog. It’s not perfect, but PG hasn’t noted any regular bad actors who have reappeared after being removed.
PG would be interested in opinions concerning placing one of these on TPV every day or two. Feel free to share your thoughts via the Comments to this post (at the very bottom of the post).
Here’s the Latest Comments WP block in action:
Right now, the muscovite regime is actively trying to destroy not just the language, but the entire history and the…
The Wayback Machine part of the Internet Archive is being squeezed, as noted in the wiki but the big threat…
Sounds like a job for AI.
Sigh… I suppose that any modern academic must use the shibboleths* of the Woke Tribe. People migrate/migrated to urban centers,…
I don’t know what went down between Cohen and Wilson, and I would find most anything believable. But it is…
Sounds good to me. I have no idea how the Recent Comments section works.
Hey, why am I the only one with a headshot photo? Or maybe better: why am I the only one with a headshot photo taken by a professional photographer and then Photoshopped to make the dude look better than he really does? 😉
On the topic, I’m fine either way. I regularly scan the Recent Comments sidebar, and would probably scan this new block, too.
In my case, it’s because I do not want to look at my ugly mug every time I leave a comment.
I can’t speak for anyone else, Harald, but my headshot would drive away some of the more sensitive and discerning visitors to TPV.
Because my fearsome visage cannot be looked upon by mortals who wish to retain their sanity? 😉
Nah, I just prefer to take pictures, not be the subject of them. And I haven’t used an avatar since RPGs stopped doing “portraits” in games. I used to collect them and rotate them through game plays.
The Recent Comments sidebar is fine; the only real fine tuning it needs is to sync up with the actual last comments posted. It’s often off by hours.
I tried but the camera broke.
Happens every time.
Last time it didn’t I was 4.
My initial reaction was to wonder how it differed from the existing “recent comments” sidebar, and then I realised that I was being stupid and had missed the inclusion of the first line or so of the comment. I can see no problem in a comment on and old post appearing above that on a newer one when the comment on the old post was actually made later.
I’m not sure how “Latest Comments” would be displayed: is it going to be a regular post, an addition to the sidebar or a link one can click on?
I suspect that I won’t find the text samples of great value, but then I’m quite happy with the “Recent Comments” sidebar, save that it could be expanded to show a greater number of items.
Mike – To some extent, it does replicate the Recent Comments function in the sidebar.
For me, the difference is that it makes the Post version different are that it’s more prominent and I suspect a few more visitors will click through and, hopefully, enter into the conversation.
Second, like any other post, it will disappear as new posts push it off the first page, so it won’t fall into the same-old visual bucket as some sidebar items display.