# Discourse Private Replies

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-private-replies/146712
**Category:** Plugin
**Created:** [April 3, 2020, 2:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-private-replies/146712 "2020-04-03T14:55:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 75

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![thoka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/thoka/32/115652_2.png) [@thoka](https://meta.discourse.org/u/thoka)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 6:54am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-private-replies/146712/75 "2025-09-04T06:54:07Z")

</div>

In my experience, users often do not understand that a reply from the original author to a private reply is public.

Would you be open to trying a slightly different algorithm optionally?

- Replies to private replies are also private
- ~~Replies to the first topic are not private~~
- Only replies of the original author to his first post or other public post are not private

Implementation-wise, adding an extra field to posts to mark them as private replies would also enable another experiment I would like to try:

Quite a few of our users, who digest the forum only by email, are not aware that a reply to an email goes public in the forum (although we added a footer with that information). I would like to try switching any reply by email to private in selected categories.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-private-replies/146712)._