I'd be very unhappy if a misguided attempt to improve something that I don't care about ruined something that I do care about.

Please leave alone the order that posts appear in in a thread.

How about reverse chronological order.

This would make it easier to see what's new, and everything is still in an order. This would get rid of the insentive to post early (even if wrong), and the long well thought out posts should end up closer to the top of the page.

-- gam3
A picture is worth a thousand words, but takes 200K.

How does the order of replies bias voting? How will randomizing the order solve that? What are the assumptions you make about:

• The purpose of voting.
• The reasons people cast votes one way or another.
• The number of people who have changed their order of reply settings.
• What "helpful" means.

How? Human nature, and physical reality of the limitations on voting. Voters are less likely to notice nodes later in a conversation than at the top. And they are also less likely to have enough votes to vote for nodes near the bottom, having used up their votes before reading this far. If you have 3 votes left, and try to vote for 6 nodes in a thread, only the first three will be accepted - later nodes will get less votes because of this.

This applies whether you're reading nodes from first to last, or last to first, presumably if most people read nodes in a single direction, that's the direction with bias.

In general, the earlier one responds to a thread, the more likely that you will get a maximum number of votes, even if someone later in the thread has a "better" response.

That said, while I understand the human theory behind artist's statement, I highly disagree with the solution. I think that randomising anything would make threads impossible to follow, and that is a much worse thing, IMO, than the slight voting bias. It just means that part of XPWing is to "post early, post often". For those who aren't XPWs, then it's entirely irrelevant.

If you have 3 votes left, and try to vote for 6 nodes in a thread, only the first three will be accepted - later nodes will get less votes because of this.

Then perhaps the solution isn't to display replies in a random order, but to if it's the case that you don't have enough votes left to cover what you want to vote for, that the votes are accepted randomly. Either that, or a message pops up saying "you tried to vote for too many. choose which you think are more important."

thor

Feel the white light, the light within
Be your own disciple, fan the sparks of will
For all of us waiting, your kingdom will come

Interesting idea, but no. I like to read things in chronological order. Also note that some replies refer to earlier posts, even if they are not replies to that post.

I usually make a couple of passes on a node (and its replies), voting as I go, upvoting nodes that make good points and help illustrate the issue at hand, and downvoting (occasionally!) nodes that are counter-productive, insulting, flamebait.

I do tend to upvote earlier nodes, but that's just because I like to reward people who give the best answer the earliest. First Post nodes are rarely the 'best' answer, and hence rarely get my vote.

Hence, randomizing wouldn't really change *my* voting patterns .. since I'm assuming that's what you are trying to influence with your change.