Why are the responses on the Community Boards so mixed up all of a sudden?!?

[1786davycrockett]

For the longest time, the Community Boards have been quite easy to read -- an OP will start a thread, and others will join in, with each response being numbered in consecutive fashion (including date & time of response), making each thread relatively coherent and understandable.

Within the past few days, however, many (if not all of the threads on the boards) seem to have been renumbered in no consecutive manner, making many of them very difficult to follow.

For example -- the beginning of a thread from 4/18/25 will indicate that it is "43 of 43" -- despite the fact that it is the first thread!  Following #43 will be LESSER numbers -- but from the FOLLOWING day "4/19/25," which would logically be HIGHER (rather than LESSER) numbers -- followed by lesser numbers from the previous day -- and so on.  

Very confusing to read, for purposes of following a meaningful conversation, unless one keeps track of the relevant time and date stamps.

Any idea what techie decided that this would somehow be yet another "improvement"?

[eburtonlab]

Is it possible you inadvertently changed your community account setting preferences from linear to threaded? Or eBay has changed your settings for you?

Or possibly you have changed the Options setting in the upper right of a board to sort by topic instead of newest to oldest?

[1786davycrockett]

@eburtonlab 

I have no idea if why I would do anything like that during only the past few days.

It's something that I would not even consider doing.

The numbering and dating system now just suddenly seems so random.

[mam98031]

I saw this on one thread.  It happened because Khoros merge two threads together because the OP had two threads going for the same thing.  So I'm not sure it is a real issue unless you are seeing this happen to quite a few threads, then something else may be happening.

[1786davycrockett]

@mam98031 

Yes, I'm seeing it on several separate threads, from different OPs, all within the past few days.

Makes it extremely difficult to follow a conversation, when the first portion of the thread (marked as #1) will actually be a response from some other individual, rather than the original beginning of the thread from the OP.

The responses jump from today, to the day before yesterday, then to yesterday, then back to today -- very confusing to read, without constantly checking the date and time in the upper right corner.

What a way to run a railroad. . .. 

[mam98031]

I agree it is a bit confusing when it happens.  Like I said I only saw it on one thread, so what you have experienced, I didn't see.  Hopefully it is back to normal now.

[1786davycrockett]

@mam98031 

@eburtonlab 

I just figured it out -- somehow or other, my board sorting had been changed to "Newest to Oldest," which created one of the wonkiest messes in communication which I've ever seen on the Community Boards.

I wasn't even aware that those settings could be adjusted, and I can't imagine how I could have done that on my own -- but things are back to normal now again, set at "Oldest to Newest."

On the other hand -- who in their right mind would want to read a thread as mixed up and convoluted as "Newest to Oldest" permits? 

[eburtonlab]

Glad to hear you were able to sort it out!

I cannot think of a good reason to use "Newest to Oldest" as the default order, but I can imagine some instances where it would be handy to change the sort order of a specific thread -- for instance, if you wanted to wanted to jump to the latest message in a very long, multi-page thread without having to page through it. Some of the ongoing puzzle threads have hundreds of pages of messages.