Chronological order liveblog entries (not archived)

[corydavidwilliam]

I know this has been addressed here quite a while ago #94

At the risk of resurrecting a dinosaur that no one is interested in, what would be involved in reversing the order of liveblog updates in this current version of liveblog? Has anyone looked at this at all?

Depending on the way you present liveblog, reverse chrono is not always the most readable format.

[philipjohn]

Hi! Could you talk about any use cases you know of where reverse chronological doesn't make sense please so we can assess this requirement a little better?

[combs]

we use the plugin for a live Q&A with our editors; they introduce the session at the beginning and talk about the day's topics. As a reader it's most beneficial to start from the beginning and read through in context, so that you can clearly tell when a conversation is building on previous entries. You can see lots of examples of this from the Washington Post:

https://live.washingtonpost.com/

[creativeagent]

yes, for us, this features would be interesting too.

[GaryJones]

Investigation Summary

We've investigated what would be needed to support chronological ordering (oldest first) as an alternative to the default reverse-chronological (newest first).

Scope of Changes

Area	Change Required
Post meta	Add liveblog_entry_order setting ('desc' default, 'asc' for chronological)
Admin UI	Add toggle in liveblog metabox
PHP: flatten_entries()	Conditionally skip array_reverse() based on setting
JS config	Pass entry_order setting to frontend
React: AppContainer.js	Conditionally reverse entries array for display
React: pollingApplyUpdate()	Append instead of prepend new entries for ASC order

Notes

• Archive mode already supports ASC ordering, so there's precedent in the codebase
• Pagination should work correctly as long as flatten_entries() respects the order setting
• Real-time updates are the trickier part: currently new entries are prepended (appear at top). For chronological order, they'd need to be appended (appear at bottom), which changes the UX

Adding to the 2.0 milestone for implementation.

[avcascade]

Thank you for investigating what it would take to implement this, Gary. Hoping it can be prioritized.

This remains an important limitation in Liveblog.

Reverse chronological order can make sense for readers repeatedly returning during a fast-moving event.

It is much less readable for:

• conference and convention coverage;
• hearings, speeches, meetings, and other proceedings;
• election-night narratives;
• liveblogs that remain published as an enduring record after the event;
• readers opening the coverage for the first time and wanting to follow events from beginning to end.

In those situations, the reader must begin at the bottom and repeatedly scroll upward, effectively reading the narrative backwards.

What's described above would meet our needs. We've already achieved this with custom code in our theme we would like to be able to get rid of. The selected order should be respected by:

• the initial entry query;
• entries received through polling or the REST API;
• updated or replacement entries;
• archived and active Liveblogs;
• any pagination or “load more” behavior.

Being able to set the default for the future as well as per-post controls for liveblogs would be useful.