How do I revert to showing Oldest First with the most recent comments loaded first?

[Andrew Bielefeldt]

Update: As of today (April 1) the previous comment view appears to have been reinstated, which perfectly solves the issue I was having with being forced to either start reading comments in the reverse order that I'm used to or having to load up an entire comment thread to get to the newest comments. I'm seeing a LOT of unhappy comments from users lamenting the loss of the Newest First sorting option though so who knows how long until they revert the revert.

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Update 2: It's back as of today, April 9, and they didn't seem to bother actually fixing the Oldest First functionality before rolling it out again.

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Before today's update, the default behavior for comments was to show Oldest First with the most recent comments loaded; older comments would be shown by clicking "View 25 Older Comments" above the comments section. Now, Oldest First loads the oldest comments, and you have to load the entire comment thread to show the most recent comments. I.e., you see this:

How do I get the old behavior where Oldest First loads the most recent comments upon initially loading a ticket?

For the record, I did try out Newest First and it's unusable for me. I've been skipping to the bottom of tickets all day and missing the most recent updates from colleagues and clients because of it.

[Mauro Tamm · Accepted solution]

This layout change is quite new - like a few days or a week.  Nothing to do with that 2019 "new issue view".

Previously it was "Top 10 newest comments and display them in ascending order"
The current view makes you read the answer before the question. It was:

***20.12.2019 ... Starting discussions
<load more/older>
20.12.2020 ... You can start working now
21.12.2020 ... I found a bug
22.12.2020 ... Did you fix the bug
23.12.2020 ... I fixed the bug

VS the new view (imagine reading):
23.12.2020 ... I fixed the bug
22.12.2020 ... Did you fix the bug
21.12.2020 ... I found a bug
20.12.2020 ... You can start working now
<load more/older>

And if you change sort you get complete trash (where you don't see new replies at all):
23.12.1980 ...
22.12.1980  ...
21.12.2019 ...
20.12.2019 ... Starting discussions
<load more/newer>
20.12.2020 ... You can start working now

It kind of feels like however did the dropdown for sort just changed the entire behaviour of the comment section because it's easier to just ASC/DESC sort everything.

[Mauro Tamm]

And, completely out of the blue, overnight - it has switched back to the old view.

Is someone committing directly to master/release?

[Eric Jaskolka]

We just noticed it was gone as well.  The team was just getting used to that flexibility on how THEY want to view the comments.

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Andrew Bielefeldt  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You cannot do that yet in the new issue view.  Here is an in progress work item for comments to add back in changing the sort order:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-73076

There appear to be several open sub-tasks for new issue view related to comments.

Best regards,

Bill

[Andrew Bielefeldt]

Does this ticket specifically address the issue where "Oldest First" loads up the oldest comments on initial view and only shows the most recent comments after loading up the entire comment history? It's being mentioned in the comments but I don't see it as a subtask. The ticket only seems to be about the sort order for comments which has apparently already rolled out.

[MF]

Hi Bill,

It was just weird to me to have a new functionality for a couple days then seeing it's gone today.  But the link you provided is helpful, I assume they reverted it because that issue didn't get fixed by the change, I saw some complaints.  Would have been nice for Atlassian to communicate that so the users weren't confused by the sudden revert.

Thanks for the info though!

[Andreas Grill]

I wrote a Firefox extension that fixes the order back to "oldest first":

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/jira-oldest-first/

feel free to use (and maybe collaborate on a Chrome version)

[Andreas Grill]

version working on Chrome (and Chromium based browsers)

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/jira-oldest-first/mmbnckdcdnhcncdaadfhenchdloeflkp 

enjoy

[Jack Brickey]

If you want to change the default for all actions. Consider changing jira.issue.actions.order under admin > system > general configuration > advanced settings 

[Andrew Bielefeldt]

I do not have administrative access on our Jira board; I'm asking this as an end user. I'm also not sure what this is supposed to do if I did have access to it; does this load the most recent comments on a ticket even when Oldest First is the sort order?

[Jack Brickey]

You should discuss with your admin to make the modification. Here are the details of this advanced setting. I have not attempted the change since they recently added the ability to sort on the fly but my expectation is that it will provide the desired results. However please note that this will change the default for ALL projects as it is a system config.

[Mauro Tamm]

Isn't this just the default for the older/newer dropdown.
This does not restore  the previous view

[Jack Brickey]

So i just did a quick test and first blush is that the jira.issue.actions.order really has no measurable impact now that the "newest first/oldest first" toggle is in place. I had assumed that it would change the default for all issue action ordering but not the case. So, as far as I can see the default order of newest first is not configurable. If someone finds otherwise LMK.

[Andrew Bielefeldt]

Edit: Nevermind, posted this just before you posted the results of your testing. I assume then that this option only changes the default for users new to Jira.

As an end user, if I change the sort order on one ticket from Oldest First to Newest First or vice versa, that will change the sorting on all tickets that I see. If all that this option does is change the default for users who have not touched the sort order (e.g. new users) then I don't see why I'd need to ask an admin to change that.

If this changes "Oldest First" to load the most recent comments by default, rather than load up the oldest comments and requiring you to load the entire comment thread in order to read the newest comments, then please clarify that. I am not trying to change the sort to "Newest First" i.e. ascending vs descending.

[Jack Brickey]

Agree Andrew. I just verified that this is indeed persistent and per user. So if I like it oldest first I can set it in one issue and all projects/issue ordering will be that way but will not impact other user.