How to Reply to a Post within a Topic?

I’m curious about the best way to reply to a post within a topic. See below, where I used the “Reply” button under @MeetMeAtThePoly’s post to reply to her comment. It put a “1 Reply” pivot beneath her post, which, when clicked on, shows my reply, but it also posted my reply at the bottom of the topic

Is this working properly? I find it a little confusing that my reply is shown twice. In pretty much all other forums (fora?) I have participated in replies to specific posts where just indented underneath that post and replies to the original topic post were added to the bottom, and they did not appear twice.

Since replying to a specific post gives that poster and alert, I would use it for situations where you have a directed response otherwise just reply to the Topic. IT is confusing when those responses show in the main Topic. Hope they can fix it.

It’s working as designed. Whether that’s “properly” or not is up for debate. :slight_smile:

See @daybreaker’s explanation here: The way replies to individual posts appear in the threads - #8 by daybreaker

You are not a software developer, are you? That is the number 1 reply from the developers when we do our implementation testing, closely followed by “But [insert blatantly obvious feature here] is not in the Business Requirements”. :smiley:

Most forums do one of two things:

They either indent replies under the parent reply (like Reddit, or Digg), or they just put the replies at the bottom of the page (like DisBoards)

The first method can get crazy when you get several levels deep into a set of replies. How far do you indent replies in a reply chain? And if you ever have to stop at a certain point, how do you show a reply to a reply after that point?

The second method can get confusing sometimes, because might forget to quote the message theyre replying to.

What this forum tries do is combine the two methods. The reply only shows up in one spot at first - chronologically at the bottom. If you quoted the parent post, you’ll notice two icons in the quote box. A down arrow, which shows you the entire conversation, and an up arrow, which will scroll you to the parent post. If you didnt quote the parent post in your reply, you’ll see a “In Reply To” link in the top right of the post, which you can click on to show the conversation being replied to. The parent post (as your image shows) gets a box showing “X Replies”. You can drop this down to see all the replies to a specific post.

In a 3 post topic, it might not make much sense. But in a 300 post thread, following specific conversations can be difficult, and I think this will provide a good way to do that.

Yup. It’s our way of defending ourselves. “It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do!” The fact that what it’s “supposed” to do isn’t what it should do isn’t our fault, that’s the requirements writers. :slight_smile:

Daybreaker, Have you looked at the CruiseCritic forums? I like their set up visually and the way you can reply to specific comments within a box and well as multiple replies in a box. For my style, it works the best. Otherwise, trust me on this, some of my posts make no sense. Well. most of mine but I can’t drop in passive/aggressive squirrel comments, looking at you @lizharrell1 's furry no count bum without looking crazy.

Visually, having the replies to individual posts in-line with the original posts isn’t working for me. I need some other stronger indicator. Having them at the bottom is the worst (I don’t see enough of an indicator that they are replies to spec posts) and I’m reading them out of order and context. Even Elaine’s stuff isn’t funny that way (hmmmmm, may have to rethink the way I just said that…)