Following feedback and discussions and a failed attempt to make things better, I’ve implemented a new layout for comments.
This layout takes into account deleted/unapproved comments.
Even though the numbering format has changed, our unique way of referring to previous comments can continue.
There may be one-or-two tweaks in the immediate future and I welcome any feedback.
Comment 1 for demonstration purposes
This is a third comment. Comment #2 remains unapproved
Ah. I just left a comment about this on site feedback – which I was typing whilst you published this.
I suppose, if things have to change they have to change but I much preferred the identity of the poster being the headline of each poster rather than an avatar and the comment number. I did not ever feel that there were so many deleted or moderated comments to make a change necessary – it seemed to happen once in a blue moon – but, if there is a demand for change, I guess we have to live with it. I can’t pretend I prefer the new format which I don’t find as amenable when scanning for a particular poster but that’s just me.
Is there a way to insert a blank line between the dateline and the text of the comment? That would improve legibility. (At present there isn’t one. Or maybe it’s just me. I use Chrome on an Android device, if it matters.)
@5 your wish is my command
The dateline surely has an extraneous “at” at the end, doesn’t it?
@4 – adjusted
@7 – oops! Gone now.
Super! Thanks Ken, I think this ought to satisfy one and all…
It wasn’t broke so it didn’t need fixing!
@10
According to many recent comments, that isn’t true.
There are many reasons why comment numbers get out of sync.
For example, Dick Dastardly posts a distasteful comment at #48 and Sneaky Pete at #53 reports it.
Meanwhile Peter Perfect has posted a comment at #49.
Admin deletes DD’s comment, PP’s becomes #48 and then it looks like Sneaky Pete (now #52) has reported PP.
This new method will (should) prevent that ugly situation.
Well done Admin! Mine was Comment #31 at https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/11/10/guardian-cryptic-crossword-no-29848-by-brendan/ which I deleted – by coincidence the first time I’ve ever deleted a comment (I didn’t know the functionality existed until recently), and fortuitously on precisely the day you changed this! It appears to be working as intended.
By the way, what happens if you now approve Comment 2 on this page?
Big Al@10, it was broke, as Admin has illustrated (and nobody was claiming otherwise when the other approach was briefly introduced; the issue before was that the cure was almost as bad as the disease.) But the new behaviour today seems to be exactly what most of us who commented wanted.
There’ll be time in due course to polish up the style a little, I’m sure.
AP @13
Take a look. It never used to be a “D” in the last word
Excellent!
The poster’s name and comment # seem jammed up very close to the avatar — I don’t know how feasible it is to shift them over slightly?
Could we have the poster’s name in a darker colour please? I find it hard to see.
The word Comment isn’t really necessary. It would be so helpful to have the hash # and number next to the poster’s name, (but only in black text as it is here, so the poster’s name still stands out as you’re scanning for it). That would enable us to simply cut and paste the poster’s name and the comment number instead of having to type them in when referring to a previous post.
Admin #1
3 steps to do that, currently
from
Admin
Comment #1
The hash #is very helpful when cutting and pasting, so that we don’t accidentally create a link when typing in @.
I quite like how the indication of comments awaiting moderation is appearing on today’s Brendan blog.
“Nobody was claiming otherwise” is blatantly untrue, I know because I was.
However, this seems like it might keep everyone happy after a few tweaks. Good work.
I think this works very well both in functionality and appearance. Thanks Kenmac.
Looks good. Well done.
Thanks Kenmac. This is the sort of thing that I had in mind when I commented a few weeks ago.
This seems a good solution and as far as I can tell is exactly what I had in mind originally regarding deleted or pending posts. Thanks, Kenmac.
One minor niggle is that the comment headers take up quite a bit of space on a mobile screen, which leads to more scrolling than should be necessary. I feel the commenter’s name, post number and date could all fit alongside the avatar. As it is, they spill below it.
Could the date go on the same line as the post number? And could the extra space above the commenter name be removed?
The date format could also be shortened to “11 Nov. 2025, 8:45 am” to help with this.
@23
Interesting suggestion re date/time format. I shall mull it over. WordPress allows you to express date/time in just about every way imaginable.
One thing that used to annoy me was that comments contained the time whereas actual posts showed only the date.
So what we now have is a completely blank time preceded by date, where the formatted date contains the word “at” and the time.
I will experiment with different formats but I must avoid having the date/time malformed elsewhere.
Thank you for all this work, Ken. One small request — the number of the comment used to be out at the head of the line, so you could quickly glance up the line to find comment 17 or whatever. Now it’s buried and surrounded and harder to find. Any way to have it out front like it useterbe?
This is all much better than the previous attempt – thanks! Glad to see the tweaks you’ve already done: adding space between the avatar and meta text, making the poster’s name bold, and moving the date stamp to the same line as the comment number.
To (perhaps?) address Valentine @25’s point, what about making the commenter’s name blue, as it used to be, and keeping it bold, but also making the comment number bold, in black?
This is looking really good now!
Good improvements, but could you consider a different colour than blue for the posters’ names? Blue text usually implies a hyperlink.
Agree that the name in blue strongly suggests it’s a link and in my opinion makes it too prominent. I would have thought standard black text should be fine. The text is already bigger than anything else and on a line on its own beneath a clear comment divider.
I would still suggest less space above the name, to bring it in line with the top of the avatar. Or maybe do a valign middle on the whole header row? This would help to add a bit more space between the date like and the comment text.
Valentine@25. Maybe this has changed since you wrote your comment but I think it’s very easy to quickly scroll and find a post by number. The number is prominently displayed and consistently placed.
That said, I do think a small amount of space to separate the header text from the comment text would be of benefit.
Lol, I see the names are green now. @kenmac
Personally I think this is one colour too many for the site, which uses a very reduced palette and, in my opinion, pleasing theme. I think black would be more in keeping with this.
Edit: now pink. Hopefully that’s a joke.😀
Names much better now!
As a good northerner, I am outraged by the suggestion that curry sauce goes with fish and chips! Nothing wrong with curry but there is a time and a place for everything!
Simon @33
[A ghastropub (sic) near me now serves a teaspoonful of curry sauce in a tiny ramekin, along with a similar sized one of mushy peas, sorry pea purée, presumably for authenticity, with its fish and chips…
I think that it’s perhaps more a Midlands thing anyway. It was standard in Nottingham in the 1970s, I can say for a fact.]
This is looking great Ken. I think this mechanism answers concerns about comment numbering to a “tee”. I do have a few suggestions:
On the cosmetic side, I’d be in favor of restoring the round avatar look with the default CSS rule:
.avatar {
border-radius: 50%;
}
Also, for the date/time, I’d recommend emulating the default comment-metadata styling by reducing the font-size to 85%, and making it
an anchor link to the element ID. This is handy in cases where a commenter wants to reference a specific comment within a long list.
On the functional side, in addition to the “pending” and “trashed” states, does the code handle comments in the “spam” state? Maybe a comment placed by Akismet in “spam” is later approved? And, in the case of pending comments, does the code allow for the normal behavior where the poster themselves can see the comment text (with “comment awaiting approval” notice), while others are screened from it? And finally, since this presumably relies on trashed comments *never* being deleted from the database, has the default system deletion after 30 days been disabled?
Bottom line — good stuff!
Coloradan @35
Comment 36 is unapproved
Comment 37 is spam
Good deal! Thanks for the styling on the date/time.
This is looking pretty good!
It’s confusing (but I would guess unavoidable) that each change is immediately applied retrospectively to every comment on the site, so we never have two versions available for comparison (I missed the pink and green names). For what it’s worth, I preferred it when the number had a line to itself, but you can’t please everyone and the present layout is OK. Thanks for all your hard work.
Ken – I see the original #37 has disappeared. Did it get deleted from the DB somehow? (My follow-up comment above I’m sure was originally @39.)
Interesting that all comments, while named Mon, Tue and Wed are *all* dated 11th Nov 2025.
Apart from this Groundhog Day feature, the new layout looks alright.
Thanks, kennac. Time to make another ‘buy me a coffee’ donation ..
@42 – good spot.
I’ve reverted the most recent change.
Hopefully it’s behaving itself now.
The misnumbering of deleted comments has been an outstanding issue for years, and I know from personal experience that it is a thorny one to fix. So great job!
One thing I don’t understand is why we see the @ symbol in both the comment number and in the text of the comments.
If I refer to Admin’s comment @43 this makes sense: “Admin’s comment at number 33”. But when I look at comment number 33 I see it has the number @33. To complicate matters I also see there a reference to the comment @42. Confusing.
I think it would make sense for each comment to just have a number, this is the number of the comment, not a reference to something. Then it is clear which are the comment numbers and which are the back-references to other comments.
I know in social media apps the @ symbol is used to identify an individual, @kenmac for instance. But this is a different thing and making comment numbers resemble “mentions” just adds to the confusion. @kenmac refers to the same person in all the posts on this site, @22 only refers to one comment in one blog.
PS – @45
For clarity – I don’t suggest getting rid of the @ symbol everywhere, just the one before the comment number in the comment header.
@45/46
I tend to agree, it has confused me a few times. As gladys @40 alludes to, it’s a symptom of the dynamic aspect of webpages that there’s nothing concrete to compare to.
I’ll make a change in a while – once I get to a real computer
I’m unsure as to why an unacceptable comment has to be deleted entirely, rather than merely having its content removed and replaced by a message like the Guardian’s when this happens:
“This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.”
The commenter’s name, avatar – if any – remain, and the numbering’s not affected. It”s what I do with the WordPress site that I administer. Yes, it’s a click, then highlight and delete, followed by a paste, rather than just one click, and perhaps if it has to be done very often then that’s an unacceptable increase in the workload burden?
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an very long comment but
after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up.
Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway,
just wanted to say wonderful blog!