From a recent comment on Atlassian Answers, Norman Hills asked “Is it possible to reverse the order in which comments appear?”

This is straightforward if done client-side, so I’ve written it up here.

If you just want to reverse the order for good, browse to Confluence Admin | Look & Feel | Custom HTML

Add this to At the end of the HEAD:

<script>
  AJS.toInit(function(){
    $comments = AJS.$('#page-comments');
    $comments.children().each(function(i,li){$comments.prepend(li)});
  });
</script>

Job done.

For extra points

If you want to be able to reverse the order, then it’s slightly more effort.

Browse to Confluence Admin | Look & Feel | Custom HTML

Add this to At the end of the HEAD:

<script>
  function reverseCommentOrder(){
    $comments = AJS.$('#page-comments');
    $comments.children().each(function(i,li){$comments.prepend(li)});
  }

  AJS.toInit(function(){
    // reverse the comment order
    reverseCommentOrder();

    // add a link to reverse the order
    AJS.$('#comments-section-title').append('<a id="page-comments-reverse" href="#">(Reverse Order)</a>');
    AJS.$('#page-comments-reverse').css({ 'color':'#999','font-size':'0.65em'})
                                   .click(function(e){
      reverseCommentOrder();
      e.preventDefault();
    });
  });
</script>

That’s all. Have fun.