In reply to TJ.

Thanks TJ, that's exactly the plugin I use. I never understood why this wasn't a core functionality. When you select reverse comment order, it should adjust pagination requirements accordingly. It just isn't sensible to display 1 or 2 comment, to page back and find hundreds more. Our application of comment use is unique in that our content IS our content. Comments are my baby. We have 400k+ comments, 70% of which are on the home page---so when anything with core is about to change with comments---I'm on edge.

In terms of allowing user to sort comments at their discretion, that sounds great for smaller comment volume; however this would have to be a functionality that we can turn off. Our content is seasonal and during tax season we have thousands of concurrent users commenting and refreshing back to back. 1000s of comments per hour already puts a huge and painful strain on the DB, I couldn't imagine what it would do if they were able to resort themselves. I know there are other solutions for this volume of conversation rather than native WP comments, but we've tried bbpress and buddypress, our users just won't go for it. And mo way will I go third party (an entirely different set of problems it would create for us.). Seems I am getting off topic, but thoroughly enjoying this convo about comments. Thank you!