I have noticed this for a while now, on conversations that span several "pages" the initial load takes some time, sometimes several seconds - when coming from an update notification link - to reach the most up to date postings.

I was wondering if navigation could be improved by a preference setting to optionally display postings in reverse order, last one first at the top of the page.

Another thing, in such long conversations, the top page menu options become very far in the current setup, and there seems to be no easy way to jump at top page. I always end up closing cake page and reopening a new one to get back at where the main navigation menus are. So perhaps duplicating the menus at bottom page, or having one to jump back up to the top, might make sense.

Thanks!

Thank you for the feedback, Dracula!
A long while ago, we had ideas on how to improve conversations with hundreds of posts. Like you, we thought of sorting options to see the most recent vs. oldest posts. However, we need to give it a lot more thought and make it simple. So no timeline for that yet.

As for a quick way to get back to the top, there is a shortcut. At the bottom right of each conversation, there are two arrows:

The arrow pointing down scrolls to the bottom of the conversation showing the latest post.

The arrow pointing up scrolls the page to the top of the conversation and the main navigation.

I know and use those arrows, but there is still a perceptual delay of several seconds for that long page on Covid 19 to load. Even with the arrows... I like and use the page, a lot, as you can see by my posts, but the delay is a minor negative to a new user I suspect

Subsequent edit ---

I was not really aware the response with the arrows was seperate, and a bit faster than clicking on the numbers - so I just clicked in a general vicinity before, rather than specifically on the arrows. The arrows do seem a bit faster, works better that way, I do agree.

Thank you Vilen for pointing me to use the arrows,They were somehow impervious to me until now. That's a nice and sleek way to navigate top/bottom. I also wonder what if you added a "search on page" for keywords, since the browser page search cannot work on content which is not already displayed.

These are all great usability observations that I have to agree with based on my own personal experience. I don’t have a clue on what’s fixable or where these improvements would fall on the current list of priorities for the team. Not discounting them, Drac, but just being upfront that even obviously good ideas 💡 can be sidelined because of higher priorities. I do know that the team is always interested in better ideas from the community, and as a long-time regular you will notice things that a new user would probably overlook.

Knowing the potential delay in getting an optimum solution implemented for a given issue, I’m always looking for hacks that get me the results I want now. I realize that these hacks have probably annoyed @Factotum in the past because they tend to be of the rubber band and chewing gum variety, but we all come to this with different perspectives on how to continually improve Cake.

One hack I can share for dealing with monster threads like this, which currently is at 400+ posts and counting.

1. Once you’ve read at least one post in a thread, you will see a blue dot 🔵 next to the current count whenever a new comment is posted. You will see these blue dots in the For You, Following, Featured and All timelines.

2. When you see a mega-thread with a blue dot 🔵, indicating there are new posts, click the blue dot.

3. You will be brought to the first post, the posts will become unreadable, and the system will attempt to bring you to the newest posts while showing a blue New posts button in the lower right of your screen.

4. Press the blue new posts button and the new posts will load in a fraction of the time normally required.

Reverse Chronological Order

I hated Twitter whenever they tried to mess with reverse chronological order.

On the Well, the first post is post zero and always stays. Every 100 posts or so they archive them to a new link, which you can access the old posts from, and you then only see post 0 and posts 101-200. In this way, you avoid having to create a new thread or suffering through the inevitable lag time when reading mega-threads.

I would love if Cake could do this since I could then share a link on social media to post 0 and posts 401 to current, of the above coronavirus discussion.

a blue dot 🔵 next to the current count

Thank you for the tip. I will keep looking for it, hopefully it's not just in the cake app - since I have no iphone, and only ever use the browser to access.

Just checked and it shows up on both browser (see below image) and the Cake app..

ymmv but I go to the long covid thread, see a blue button indicating new post, click on the title. Beside the up and down arrows is a "new " button. I click on that and go straight to latest post. Takes a second.

I haven't tested but you may need to have previously clicked on "follow" for new posts button to appear when you open the conversation?

I use the New button all the time. I haven't had any complaints with navigation. I didn't know about the blue dot trick. Clicking the dot takes you right to the new posts, so that's cool.

I've noticed that when I click on a notification that says there are new posts in a conversation I'm following and multiple people have posted since I left it, it will take me to the post by the person referenced in the notification. So I end up at the last post rather than the first new one.

I don't recall if this happens on desktop, but it definitely does in Brave on Android for me.

Edit: I suppose that's probably how it was intended, since you may have many of these notifications for any one conversation. But it seems to reference the latest poster. It would make more sense to reference the first poster instead so you don't skip new posts you haven't seen yet.

No, you don't need to be following a conversation for the New link to show up. You just need to have read some of it before. You should also get the blue dot regardless of whether you are following it or not. There will be a gray bubble for post count if you've never read any of the conversation and a white one if you have. You'll get a blue dot on white if there are new posts in a conversation you've previously read.

I've noticed that when I click on a notification that says there are new posts in a conversation I'm following and multiple people have posted since I left it, it will take me to the post by the person referenced in the notification. So I end up at the last post rather than the first new one.

I know, it is a minor annoyance for me too. Fortunately, if you scroll up you will see the New marker when you reach the newest new post, so you don’t have to guess where you last left off in the thread. But it’s still friction to the user experience. (Tagging @Chris, @kevin)

I haven't tested but you may need to have previously clicked on "follow" for new posts button to appear when you open the conversation?

"New" posts button always shows up if there are new posts since the last visit. It works independently from the "Follow" a conversation button. 😉

Click on the "New" blue button at the bottom right of the screen to scroll to new posts.

Whoa, 400+ posts! To me, 20 posts is too long already for navigation. The first/last arrows help, but I also would like arrows for previous post / next post. Maybe also for previous ten posts / next ten posts, if there are more than a hundred posts.

A great option would be to turn off images. Or at least to turn off gratuitous images. Users should specify when they attach an image, whether it is important for conversation, or it is there just to liven up the post.

I would also like to have in-Cake recents stack. So, I am reading one thread, then jump somewhere else, then somewhere else, and then I can jump back to the first one. There should be a menu, tracking my recent threads, which would bring me back to the same post I was reading. On a big screen this can be implemented on a sidebar, so my current thread would be in a wide area, and my "background" threads in the sidebar. Not sure about the UI for a smartphone.

The bottom bar. When I am on the homepage or browsing the topics, there is the bottom bar for Home / Recents / Search / Mentions. I like it, it is useful. I wish it were shown when I read a thread.

The bar that invites to make a new post first looked ambiguous to me: where this post will go? Ok, it goes to the current thread without quoting anyone. But for the first time it was not clear, maybe it should have better be linked to a thread visually.

The edit link on a post: first, thanks for unlimited edits! For a long, um, essay-long post it is a pain to scroll up for the Edit link, I wish it was floating beside the post.

When replying to a post the complete post that is being replied to goes into the hidden quote or whatever it is called, that can be clicked and opened. If I also manually quote by copy/pasting and formatting a specific portion as a quote, I get the same text twice. It would be nice if I could select a portion in someone's post to quote, and this portion would be emphasized in that hidden quote element, which would save me from manual quoting. This won't work for multi-quote though.

There is a concept in design called 'desire paths'. It's what users do to achieve their goals even though the design prevents them from doing. Hashtags on Twitter, for example, started as that, a way for users to organise and classify tweets when the system had no such affordances. Finding desire paths users make and then actually paving them over so they don't have to go through mud to use them is a way to delight and surprise them. Nowadays hashtags are such an integral part of Twitter that people don't even realise that they started as a hack by frustrated users.

Those 'part 2', 'v2', 'v3' posts are a desire path for Cake users who want for the conversation to load quickly and get to new posts, fast.

Completely understand and agree. This idea has attracted me for quite some time.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
Elegant design is also functional. There is however the topic of front end GUI and then the "under the hood" so to speak, of which majority end user is (or should be) impervious.