Is there a way to modify an existing topic reply to be a post-specific reply? I know I am guilty of it as well, but there are numerous times that I see someone clearly replying to a specific post but they mistakenly use the topic reply. It would be great to have the ability to fix the reply-type via the “select post” menu.
hmm other than editing the post with a quote from the post being replied to or something like that, I can’t think of another way.
One thing that might help is adding “to topic” to the footer topic button label, so it says “reply to topic” to make it more obvious and distinguish it from the post reply buttons:
in common - css of a theme component:
#topic-footer-buttons {
.topic-footer-main-buttons {
button.btn-primary.create {
span.d-button-label:after {
// Adding this content after Reply
content: " to Topic";
}
}
}
}
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It would be nice to be able to relocate a reply, but the CSS from @Lilly works great!
I had to review make CSS changes, and it was a snap.
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I really like Lilly’s solution as well. After implementing it on my forum, it confuses me why it wouldn’t be the default setting for Discourse. Seeing the two reply buttons here on Meta just seems outdated now 
Thank you!
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They mean different things.
But yeah, tbh they should have different localised strings so they can be edited separately (imho) (I believe they are not separate but please correct me if they are distinct)
CSS isn’t really the best way to implement this if you could PR that instead.
(it’s a great workaround though in the meantime! 
)
3 Likes
Ah, yeah, I know the one above is to reply directly to the post and the one at the bottom to the topic, I guess I meant the labeling just seemed confusing, not the repetition of the buttons themselves.
I agree a PR would be better than CSS, and I’d love to one day figure out how to run Discourse locally on my Mac so I can feel more confident submitting PRs. I imagine this one would be maybe the least likely to cause any other bugs, but I think I’d feel more relaxed testing it out locally first.
you as in “one”, not necessarily “you”, but there’s no stopping you!
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Side note and off topic, I think so many of the conflicts in my life come when someone says “you” to me and I either subconsciously assume they mean me or I pause and say, “When you say you, you mean me?” and sometimes they look completely confused. My buddy even once said, “You always do that!!” and I was like, “I always do what?” and he said, “Huh? Oh, I didn’t mean you, I meant me. I always do that.”
Thank you for the clarification and yes I hope to reach that next level of Discourse contribution one day
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I also implemented @Lilly’s suggestion (thank you!), but I do still think there’s value in having a moderation solution to connect posts after they are created. I tried editing the post and adding a quote but it didn’t “link” the reply like I had hoped.
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I think we have a feature topic on this:
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Adding CSS may not be the best solution — and my CSS may not be the best CSS — but I found that the following works to also add context to the reply-to-post (comment) button:
nav.post-controls {
.actions {
button.reply {
span.d-button-label:after {
// Adding this content after Reply
content: " to this comment";
}
}
}
}
Lacking a way to relocate a post after the fact, clearer labeling seems a good way to prevent confusion. Ideally this would be in the form of custom button label fields in Settings.
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It is not recommended to use after insertion for the text on the site, if you modify this button, you can modify the site text after searching for topic.reply.title
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I’d prefer to do it that way, but edits via Site Texts to js.topic.reply.title affect both the reply-to-topic and reply-to-post buttons. It would be great if they were differentiated in the code so we could edit them separately.
5 Likes
It seems that I misunderstood, and I did not examine the topic seriously
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yes exactly this. my solution is admittedly a bit of a hacky work-around 
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I realized that my first pass at this made the Reply button for OP read “Reply to this comment” – just like subsequent posts. But it’s not a comment—it’s a Topic.
Aiming a similar CSS block at #post_1 can give that first button its very own text.
Here’s the full custom CSS component I’m using now, ordered by use on the page:
/* add text to Reply button for the original post (aka Topic) */
#post_1 nav.post-controls {
.actions {
button.reply {
span.d-button-label:after {
// Adding this content after Reply
content: " to this Topic";
}
}
}
}
/* add text to Reply button for all subsequent posts (I'm calling them comments) */
nav.post-controls {
.actions {
button.reply {
span.d-button-label:after {
// Adding this content after Reply
content: " to this comment";
}
}
}
}
/* add text to blue Reply (to Topic) button appearing at the end of the page */
#topic-footer-buttons {
.topic-footer-main-buttons {
button.btn-primary.create {
span.d-button-label:after {
// Adding this content after Reply
content: " to main Topic";
}
}
}
}
3 Likes
I’m off topic, and this is very localized question, but I would like to improve a bit Todd’s snippet.
How can I get rid off Reply totally, and I mean text, not button/functionality of course?
Something as Reply to post is too long (for me) and simple Comment would be enough.
(Finding this post using search was harder than finding Nemo. Until I remembered I clicked like — so… liking helps to find things better than a search 
)
1 Like
It’s just a localised string so you can edit it?
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It can’t be empty. And a space is counted as empty too.
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@Jagster - you could try something like this:
First remove the existing reply icon
with custom CSS:
.fa.d-icon.d-icon-reply.svg-icon.svg-node {
display: none;
}
Then edit Site Texts for js.topic.reply.title to replace “Reply” with an alt-code for another symbol, like alt + 30: ▲
Then you could add custom text for each of the three button types via CSS as noted earlier.
My only concern with getting rid of “Reply” is that terms like “Last reply”, “Replies”, “Good Reply”, "Great Reply, “In Reply to”, etc. are used throughout the system, and it could be a chore to identify and change all the relevant instances appropriately.
2 Likes