Question/suggestion about arrow/icon referencing replied to post

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@seanblue

Is there still no interest in finding some visual way to differentiate between replies to the post right above and replies to the topic itself?

Not… really?

@seanblue

In that original topic, I was told about a site-wide setting where those reply icons are displayed even when the reply is to the post immediately above. We enabled that on our install and personally I’ve had a mixed experience with it. While it did “fix” my original problem, I now find myself clicking the reply icon to see the previous post, just to see that it was actually the post right above. In short, I understand why the Discourse defaults are the defaults, as they do seem better than the current alternative.

I’m kind of unclear what it is you are proposing?

It is obvious that replies are to the overall topic by default because the replies exist in the topic. So the only callout needed is in the case where a reply is specific to a particular post:

• the in-reply-to indicator (with the caveats around “one reply directly under” which is what the site setting is for, if you want that) which indicates the target post

• quotes of the target post

• @username mentions which can imply a reply is to a person in general across the topic, e.g. “I want to address the points raised in the 5 posts @username made in this topic..”