In this discussion, Joris_1975 reports that replies in Discourse appear both under the original post (via the “Replies” button) and again later in the thread, causing duplication. They suggest removing the duplicated section to improve readability and flow. RGJ supports the idea but raises a concern: if replies to replies (e.g., C replies to B, which replies to A) are hidden from the main stream, how should they be displayed? Joris_1975 suggests nesting them under the parent reply, but RGJ notes this could lead to deeply nested threads. Joris_1975 acknowledges the potential for long threads but argues users can collapse replies if needed. pfaffman clarifies that Discourse doesn’t support true threading — it displays posts chronologically, and the “Replies” button simply re-displays them for context. Thus, duplication is intentional, not configurable. Joris_1975 questions the utility of the button if it causes confusion. pfaffman explains the button’s purpose is to show context and link back to parent posts, and notes that while confusing to some, communities often adapt. They suggest hiding the button via CSS or renaming it for clarity. awesomerobot adds that embedded replies are useful for quickly accessing replies that appear far down the thread. The core issue remains: Discourse’s design prioritizes chronological reading over threaded conversation, and no built-in setting changes this behavior.
Here’s an example, it’s about the way comments and replies are presented.
On the picture below, you can see that when someone replies to a comment, a button “Replies” appears. But then also, the comments are doubled below in another section of the thread.
Can the additional (doubled) comments be removed and just keep the replies?
With this simply change, the forum would be way more user-friendly and the conversations would be flowing. Sure there is a solution for it, but we can not find it.
That’s a pretty interesting line of thinking, I actually like this idea. When the replies are shown directly beneath the post, hide them in the rest of the post stream.
Possible caveat:
It will only show replies, not replies to replies.
If post B is a reply to post A, and post C is a reply to post B,
and post B is hidden from the post stream and shown as a reply to post A
How do we show post C ?
I agree it could be a thousand of posts, but as long as its a reply on a specific post that would be ok, and if you don’t want to read those replies, you can close them all with replies button. But I agree there are 2 possibilities and 2 preferences, just wondering if it is possible or not, if it is an option somewhere .
It’s not. Discourse presents all posts in order of their being written. When you click the “replies” button you are effectively asking that the posts be displayed twice, so they are displayed twice. Discourse just doesn’t do threading. It’s designed to make you read all of the comments, in order.
Perhaps Richard can think of a way to change that, but it’s a tall order.
It’s to let you see what the replies are and indicate that there are replies, just like where the reply is, there is a link to the post that it’s a reply to.
I had a community that struggled with this duplicated replies issue, which took me quite a while to understand just what they were talking about. Eventually they got used to it, or so it seems.
It is definitely a feature that people coming from other forums find confusing.
And if you do want to hide the replies button, you can do it with CSS. It might be a good idea since people find it confusing. You might be able to come up with some words to use instead of “replies”, like “show the replies that are shown further down below”, but figure out how to say that in 2 or 3 words.
The most obvious case for the embedded replies is when there are lots of posts in-between the original post and a reply, it’s essentially a short-cut to far-flung replies.
