Interesting. I think you could leave this (and another) option to your users.
- I want to see posts in
[ ] Ascending [x] Decendingorder - I want to see replies in
[x] Threaded [ ] Flatmode
Leaving the options to the user is never a bad thing. But you need to figure out what you would like to have as default option. personally I like descending threaded
My friend at Malmö University, but what do you and your stakeholder prefer?André Mabande, wrote his Bachelor degree on the topic with the title Designing for Dialogue. He concludes that:
The findings in this study seem to validate the hypothesis of the chronology as a major factor for generating a consistent discussion within a commenting field. When comments are shown in the order posted (i.e. later posts after earlier in the order of reading) the amount of replies to a specific post are significantly higher than when shown in the reverse chronological order.
Ask them and implement!It's something to concider when you design any kind of social feed. Mr Mabande also gives some advice on how to design for the most interaction:
To create a path of action that leads the user into conversating with others about the topic the design should display comments chronologically with the comment posting section placed after the last visible comment. Also more than 20 comments should be shown to give the user an incentive to read a large section of what’s been previously posted to increase the possibility to see the context of the discussion. Whether a single-thread or a multi-thread structure should be chosen is up for debate, but I would recommend the single-threaded due to the risk of repetition in the different branches of the multi-threaded design.