JRASERVER-74122: Since version 9.4.0 caused significant issues within the user community, and these were addressed in version 9.4.6, this problem JRASERVER-77658 is likely to be annoying for them again.

JRASERVER-5443: The manual changes made by users to the comment sort order will now be retained in the user profile. This means the sorting order setting will remain the same until the users change it again.

While the user profile will honor these specific changes, we want the default sort order to be "Oldest first." Therefore, JRASERVER-77658 is the bug affecting us. I strongly believe that the priority and severity of this bug should be increased.

At minimum, this should be backported to LTS 9.12, but it would also be nice to see this included in LTS 9.4 as well, since that is still a supported LTS release. 

This is a very important change to improve user experience. 

why is this fix not provided for LTS 9.12.x ?

@Alex - Aha!  Yes.  Having the comment section in a fixed position in the browser window (at the bottom) while the existing comments can be scrolled without scrolling the comment input box would be even better!

I will refer to comments like @JM R. to explain my interpretation of "fixed".

This will probably need to be a separate ticket, but to reiterate, a good and proper "fix" would be to have the comment input box "fixed" at the bottom of the browser window, independent of comment scrolling. And full credit to @Alex for stating this.

They wouldn't be Atlassian if they were to (timely) implement the little nice things (as the community asks).
Clearly UX/QA failed when the changed sort order became the default without a (user-based) option to override.
And it failed again when a deemed solution was provided.

@BruceR I probably couldn't describe it well. I totally understand the issue you describe!

With the solution I described the comment entry box is "next to the most recent comment". But as it's fixed you can actually scroll further through the comments (while also having the box) and read either the latest or older comments. That's actually a very good solution.

With "independent from the comments" I mean it's neither fixed at the top nor at the bottom within the comments section. It's fixed below and "outside the comment section and therefore "independent" from the scrolling state of the comment list. You can read through all the comments (in the order you like) while having the text input box available.

@Alex - I went to reply to your comment, but now I have to scroll up and down, up and down, to see your comment again, then type a little more, then see your comment again.  My point was that the comment entry box should be next to the most recent comment, whether that's at the top or bottom, but next to the most recent, and most definitely not "independent from the comments".

@BruceR That problem is already solved. The comment box is now fixed, visible/accessible at the bottom of the screen (independent from the comments) and you can scroll through all comments while also having the input box (at least in our Jira DC installation - not in this one here).

The next step on this topic would be - if comments are sorted newer on top, then adding a comment should occur ABOVE the most recent comment, not stuck at the bottom under the first comment.

Most often, you are replying to the most recent comment, and it would be nice to still see that while typing your new comment.