Add "Quote reply as new topic" button next to "Quote reply"

Feature
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Twice this morning I got stuck in a situation where I was writing a post and wanted to start some new topics in reply rather than write one long reply with lots of points (as I would in a mailing list :wink:). The “reply as new topic” just includes the whole post and then you have to delete what you don’t want. This is ok but better functionality would be to let you select the text you want and then click “reply as new topic” or even better to have a second button “quote reply as new topic” next to the “quote reply” that pops up when you quote text.

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I agree that it makes sense for the highlight to be respected when you click/tap “reply as new topic”.

I don’t know that Reply as New Topic is used so frequently that it should be a focus of development at this time… particularly since the workaround (just delete the extra quoted bits you don’t need) is pretty easy.

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Yup - I agree. In fact I even find the “quote reply” popup to be a bit distracting, as I more often than not am selecting text not to reply but to do other things with it like save it to evernote etc. Having the highlight respected for “reply” and “reply as new topic” would be more than good enough for me.

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heh… I just tried to use this feature 1 minute ago on our forum. would be nice!

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@eviltrout how hard would it be to get “reply as new topic” to respect the post user highlight, if one exists… like Reply does now?

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Not too hard!

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The UX is somewhat brokenated now that reply as linked topic is moved to a different location.

out-22.gif832×608 204 KB

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Probably unavoidable as the dialog has a textbox with selected text, the URL.

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Does that need to be preselected? Or can it just be selected when you click in the URL box?

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It does due to copy paste facility, yes.

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What if we added a button to “Reply as New Topic” in the reply composer…?

new topic.png940×448 45.8 KB

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This idea has been discussed elsewhere here.

Search or trust my powers of recall. :older_man:

It was felt that such a button there no matter how conservatively styled would me more prominent than need be or desired.

I believe there was some talk about making it a option under the gear. But I don’t remember where, if anywhere, that ended.

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The most likely position is in the upper left where the reply arrow is, for that reply arrow to be a drop down button. Per the earlier mockup by @DeanMarkTaylor.

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Here is the mockup

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Ah yes. That was a hard one to get a balance between “think three moves ahead” and full on off-topic

Looking back and thinking on this aspect out of that friendly fray. …

For some reason I’m thinking ^v icons like sort to toggle - Default “normal” - might work well enough and preserve real estate

I still think the gear is good place. A bit more hidden perhaps, but as low hanging fruit it could have some merit.

I was hoping to get more data sample sets, so with only those of two real sites my thesis sure won’t be getting accepted by Forum Science Journal

Anyway, my conclusion at that time
With the new right gutter, where should "Reply as Linked Topic" go? - #33 by Mittineague

… a majority start new topics either quoting or posting a link to the “source” post.
… the number of new topics started by using the Reply As is a considerable percentage.

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This is now possible.

  1. Select the text
  2. Click the link button, as in “I want to build a reply that links to this”
  3. Click New Topic in the popup
  4. Profit!

:smiley:

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Nice! However I don’t think it’s working yet on mobile, here in this meta topic.

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Seems to work just fine for me on mobile… (Google chrome on Android.) Might have been to quick on the draw before the site rebuilt perhaps?