Users reported that “In reply to” links on a private Discourse forum stopped working on desktop browsers, though they functioned correctly on mobile and on Meta. Initial speculation centered on deleted posts or platform-specific behavior, but gurtz confirmed the issue affected all replies and wasn’t tied to moderation or deletion. After discussion, Watson identified the root cause: a setting called “max reply history” was set to 0 by default, disabling the parent post expansion feature. Increasing it to 10 restored functionality. gurtz confirmed the fix worked for their forum. Heliosurge noted their own setting was 1, suggesting variability across installations. The issue appears tied to a recent Discourse update and configuration, not a universal bug. Users are advised to check and adjust “max reply history” if experiencing similar behavior. Moin emphasized that without knowing the forum’s version or plugins, diagnosing such issues is difficult — reinforcing the need for admins to investigate internal settings. The resolution highlights how a hidden setting can break expected UX without obvious error indicators.
A number of users of the forum have reported the same issue.
I don’t know if this applies on the mobile app, but it definitely does on desktop browsers. (I’ve been able to replicate the issue on Chromium, Firefox, and Brave.)
Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue? Thanks!
No, the posts (being replied to) have not been deleted or flagged. It seems to literally be every post with an “in reply to” where this happens. It’s not limited to just one or two cases.
But the behavior I’m seeing does seem to be the same as what is seen with the “New sidebar design” post @Moin referenced above.
Thanks. That’s not what I’m referring to, though. The “share post” feature works fine. It’s the “in reply to” link (to the left of “share post”) that doesn’t work.
I think it is more likely an issue with the specific forum.
But since we know nothing about the version, configuration of related settings, installed plugins, … it is very difficult to find out what caused this.
I have the feeling that there is a misunderstanding.
No one expects it to open a composer for replying. But when an avatar and username are shown, it indicates that this post is a reply to another post. And usually, when you click that, like here at Meta, you see the post to which the post replies. The problem is that this doesn’t work on another private forum, and @gurtz tries to find out why.
