(I originally posted this elsewhere):
I just ran into this. User obviously aimed a reply at a specific post, but replied to the topic. The reply requires the context of the earlier post to make sense. It would be nice to be able to administratively “re-parent” the reply somehow.
I understand Jeff’s philosophical position on this (“it is enabling bad behavior.”) But I think there are occasions where, for the benefit of a topic, an admin might want to quickly patch something up and communicate with the user after the fact.