# Comment / indirect reply
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/comment-indirect-reply/112340
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [22 maart 2019 om 15:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/comment-indirect-reply/112340 "2019-03-22T15:38:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ConorSheehan1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ConorSheehan1)
#### Post date: [22 maart 2019 om 15:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/comment-indirect-reply/112340/1 "2019-03-22T15:38:39Z")
Is it possible to indirectly reply to a post? i.e. **comment** instead of **reply**.
And if not, would it be possible to add as a feature?
The reason I ask is that in the [travis-ci discourse](https://travis-ci.community/t/comment-or-indirect-reply-for-travis-ci-community/2710) I came across a question. I had information relevant to the question, that didn’t directly answer the question, so I felt I shouldn’t use the reply feature.
Maybe I’m too used to stackoverflow and how the reply section is strictly reserved for direct answers. Do you think distinguishing between replies and comments would be useful?
I’m also not sure how adding a comment section would fit into the [flat vs threaded discussion](https://meta.discourse.org/t/threaded-vs-flat-discourses-way-of-handling-responses-is-genius-but-i-have-one-small-suggestion/4053). It might make the layout overly complicated. Maybe a reply could have a tag or something indicating it’s a comment?
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### Author:  [@bts](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bts)
#### Post date: [22 maart 2019 om 15:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/comment-indirect-reply/112340/2 "2019-03-22T15:51:19Z")
I think “reply as new topic” basically handles this! It creates a new topic for a related but separate discussion, linked to the topic it split off from. See:
> [@Creating a new topic that's linked to an old topic?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-new-topic-thats-linked-to-an-old-topic/46934):
>
> What’s the best way to do the above? Our Discourse implementation being relatively new, I’m often finding topics on here which either don’t quite answer my question, haven’t been commented on for a while or are closed. So I want to create a new topic, in the same category (probably) pre-populated with something like “Carrying on the topic discussed in URL”.
But in general, yes, intended use / conversation style for Discourse is very different from e.g. Stack Overflow. As long as you’re more or less on topic, replies that continue the conversation are usually encouraged even if they don’t provide a single canonical answer to a question!
Another thing to keep in mind is that forum moderators can also split off any number of replies in a topic into a separate one, whenever they want. So if a sort-of-related reply ends up sparking a diverging thread of discussion that could stand alone, those replies can be batch-moved to a new topic later as needed.
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### Author:  [@neborion](https://meta.discourse.org/u/neborion)
#### Post date: [14 mei 2020 om 00:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/comment-indirect-reply/112340/3 "2020-05-14T00:46:23Z")
Indeed, these ways of doing things can help meet some of @ConorSheehan1 needs.
Nevertheless I would like to testify my need that there is also this “Comment” feature that ConorSheehan1 describes: A reply that is added under a message but does not add to the main thread.
I will study the proposal of @angus who proposes this plugin :
> [@Question Answer Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/question-answer-plugin/56032):
>
> mega This plugin is now retired in favour of the official [Discourse Post Voting](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-post-voting/227808) plugin Question Answer plugin that allows you to create topics in a similar QA style used by Stack Overflow. [page_facing_up Get the code](https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-question-answer)[desktop_computer See an example](https://try.thepavilion.io/c/qa/)[raising_hand_woman Request a feature](https://thepavilion.io/w/feature-request)[bug Report a bug](https://thepavilion.io/w/bug-report)Of note memoUp-votes, but no down-votes (yet) The first post of the topic cannot be voted on (yet). Adding this would raise some …
Do you know other people who express a similar need? Similar topics? Do you have any advice on how to search or work on the existence of this feature?