Should posts comments be paginated?

Question

I was wondering if a blogs posts comments should be paginated or not and why? I did not know where to ask this question so I asked it here.

Answer 1

I like the way the NY Times paginates their blogs' comments (see e.g. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/the-magic-that-is-ted/). There are 25 comments to a page, and the pagination links are small and visually subtle so as not to overbear.

Answer 2

I think that it depends on the blog. Think about what the readers would prefer... if pagination makes comments more useful to them, then put in pagination.

Pagination is not the only way — and probably not the best way — to present blog comments. I prefer to see a small selection of the best comments rather than pages and pages of comments. I think that The Daily WTF does this very well: the author manually picks out two or three really good comments to appear on the main page, and the rest get pushed to a separate comments page.

• For example: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Is-Your-PC-Frozen.aspx