Following along from Louie's post and the discussion around it…
How should new visitors to Lesswrong see posts and comments ordered and filtered? (Assume we'll address the new visitors should be introduced to the site issue.) These will remain settings that are easily changed, but how should they start?
Current defaults:
Promoted posts, ordered by recency is our most prominent post list.
Comments are sorted by "Popular", which is Top with a very strong ageing of points (so recently voted comments rise to the top of the list, and very high voted comments fairly quickly drop away).
Options seeded in comments by me below, my karma balance at bottom. Please vote on at least one "Posts:" comment and one "Comments:" comment.
The intended reference class was "people accustomed to reading blogs (of which LW is one)".
I myself was a major consumer of Usenet; I don't remember it being it particularly non-chronological. Maybe that depended on reader software.
But yes, Reddit and Slashdot are examples of how not to do it.
AFAICT Livejournal seems to work chronologically like most blogging platforms. At least, I don't remember recently being frustrated by finding a later comment before an earlier one when reading a Livejournal blog.
You've moved my opinion, but not far enough to change the site defaults as you request.
I think it likely that a demonstration that community opinion is on your side would inspire me to act. You could demonstrate community opinion with a Discussion area poll post.