Pages, Please, Rather than “Load More” or “Load More Comments”

One of the annoying things about the Internet these days is the way that certain sites don't show all comments at once. Ok, maybe that is cumbersome, but the practice used to be (and still is on some sites) to put them on separate pages. Then, if you wanted to find a comment again, and you knew it was on page 20, you could find it fairly easily because the pages would be listed and you could just click on page 20. Now many sites say something like "Load More" or "Load More Comments." If the comment you were interested in didn't appear until after you had clicked on "Load More" for six times, say, then to find it again you have to click it again six times. What a bother. The same thing can happen if you happen to click away from the site because a commenter has posted a URL of something interesting; going back to the original site can mean clicking a bunch of times on "Load More" until you get back to where you were.

Also annoying is the practice of showing not the oldest comments first, but the newest ones. However, the newest ones are responding to other comments, so it is pointless to look at them until you've seen the older comments.

Are the people designing these features actually users? That is, do they themselves actually look at people's comments when they surf the Internet, or are they just guessing about what people want? I'd be interested in hearing why they've made the choices they've made.

Comments

[Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)]

I wonder whether the problem you describe can be solved by using the "Ctrl+F" feature to find a given search string. What you do is simultaneously hold down the Ctrl key and press the "f" key. This brings up, in the upper-right corner of the screen, a box into which you type the search string you want to find. Upon hitting RETURN, all instances of the search string are found.

[John Pepple]

I've been assuming that the only ones that will show up are those that could actually be found by scrolling down and that any that are hidden by "Load more" will not be found. But I will check next time this comes up.