I notice a little confusion about the sorting order of postings inside forums. Please help my out to clarify the meanings of 'ascending' and 'descending'

I go to the postlist of a forum. The forum has a default sorting order of 'descending'. Is it correct that a thread with the last new posting display on top, right behind possible older stickys? the oldes thread should be on the last page.

The confusion on my board is that some forums in the control panel show 'ascending' sort as default but in my user front side of the board in the posting list is 'descending' as default in the selector.

Also the link on the top of the posting list near 'view' who switch the sort order show a ^ but the link points to ascending and whe you click it you get v ... in my eyes it has to be inverted.

Can you follow me or should I send pictures?