Question [For discussion] Let's talk about "Last post First" as a user preference

*** Topic split from Last post First? ***

The general answer to this question, "How do I change the 'Default' sorting order", seems to be...

'We think' you should not choose what the default sorting option is for your members regardless of your reasons. They can chage it themselves if "they" want. (Despite the fact that Kunena has already chosen what the default sorting order is for your members.) And we will not help you find a way around this. Basically, we don't think you should. If you don't like it, too bad.

I am not saying that anyone is obligated to help us. Of course not. But when you 'do' offer an answer and keep responding to people with "answered in this topic" and the 'answer in this topic' is the aforementioned... it is not actually an solution. It is assumptious, hypocritical and at times a bit rude.

The only one that has offered any clues to an actual solution, is LeFunk. But sadly that soultion is for an older version.

Please don't get me wrong. I very much appreciate Kunena and the forums here. But it seems as though someone is taking this question as a personal attack on the functionality of Kunena. It's not. We just want to know how to do this. Your opinions on why we should or shouldn't are irrelevant.

And even though I shouldn't have to justify why I want to do this... I have a website for 10 old men. That's it, 10 people. Registration to new members is closed. It is their own personal fantasy football site. They want the forums sorted by newest post first. I have already set each of their profiles this way. However, sometime they want to catch-up on new forum posts without signing in. And when they proudly show friends their website, they want the forum to be sorted the same without having to sign in. And when they refer friends to their site, they want others to see it the way they had me design it.

Does this seem silly? It doesn't matter! They are my clients. They are old men that like things the way they like them. And they pay me to do it the way they like it.

My point is, please either give people an actual solution or don't. But don't tell them, 'we don't think you should do it this way', and call that a solution. All I'm saying is that there is nothing wrong with just telling people, 'users can set this themselves on an individual level. There is no setting or published hack to change this universally, yet.'

Again, this is not meant to be disrespectful. I very much appreciate this forum and all the help it provides. It is just frustrating to search for hours only to find an "answer" that offers no actual solution but rather just an 'opinion' on why we shouldn't.

Respectfully,
-CC

There is always going to be some disagreement about whether the design of Kunena is best for everyone, whether certain features (many of them that have been part of Kunena or inherited earlier from Fireboard) should remain in the way they've been retained over the past 3½ years, whether certain important issues may have been overlooked or whether they should be revisited and changed. I think this is what makes Kunena different from many other Joomla extensions - the project team needs to listen what people want.

I'm not saying that I agree with everything you're written (and I most strongly disagree with some of your assertions about what you may perceive as a lack of due regard or respect shown to those who have enquired about this or any other matter raised on the forum) we have tried have keep things in proper perspective. Taking a balanced and conservative approach, the current design of Kunena may lack some features that certain sections of the community see as a "must have" but, all things considered, the project team has tried to deliver a stable, reliable and durable solution in terms of meeting the overall general needs of those who want to to have a web-based discussion forum running on their sites.

What I have written before on this topic - and I hope that people properly understand that what they see below is only my personal opinion - follows:

sozzled wrote: We do understand [the issue]. [The issue] is "Can we configure Kunena so that the default order is last post first?" [This] question has been asked many times and we have consistently given the same answer. Let me again give ... the answer:

The selection between first-post-first and last-post-first is configurable on a user-by-user basis. That is, each user can make that choice - select their own preference - themselves.

Just as it is a very simple matter for us to answer this very simple question ... it is a very simple matter for [people to advise members of their own communities how] to choose how they would like to view [their] messages. [They] can choose to see topics ordered first-post-first or last-post-first. This is how Kunena has always worked (and Fireboard before that).

No-one is arguing whether first-post-first is not as good as last-post-first.

The only matters for discussion are:

(1) Should the default order be configurable; and
(2) Should each user be able to choose between one way or the other?

If people would like to see changes made to either of these two matters I have just mentioned they also have a choice:

(1) Vote for changes to Kunena by submitting their ideas via our feedback feature .
(2) Offer to sponsor the changes to Kunena by donating to the project.

Where the project team has been unable to accommodate everyone's wishes, Kunena is an open-source software project that people can adapt or modify to suit their individual tastes. This is the principle upon which the project was founded and this principle will be guaranteed to continue in the future.

I split the topic in which you originally posted your question because your questions deserve a fair an open airing. We would like to see how other members of the community agree or disagree with the issues you've raised and let the project team respond to specific matters requiring redress in future versions of Kunena. Does this approach seem reasonable to you?

Looks like we have had this feature from K1.0.8 (to allow admins to choose default ordering), but we have lost the configuration option in the backend at some point, probably at Kunena 1.6... You can still change the setting by changing default_sort='desc' directly from our database (#__kunena_config), but the option was lost from the backend -- I have no idea why.

I'll create a bug report from missing backend option and we'll add default sorting option back to K2.0.

Hi!
In my opinion user should decide individually about "Preferred Message Ordering".