I don’t understand. It happens every day even here, by team members too, but it doesn’t bother anyone. Too much anyway, because everyone knows nothing can be done.
It isn’t that obvious whether a reply should go to the topic or the post. So it is a much bigger question than just about educating and penalizing.
And how should we penalize an user for using the wrong reply button? Public shaming or silencing? We don’t penalize in any way when an user uses the wrong category or tag. We just fix it and that’s it, just another Tuesday. But this we can’t fix when it would be suitable.