Here is a link obtained with the share button of the last post of a thread:
Notice that when you open that link, the page doesn’t scroll all the way up to the linked post, and the URL gets changed to 3ds Max Plugin Development - Work In Progress - appleseed Users Forum (the previous post).
That’s because we leave a small margin on the top.
That’s because post 35 is in the viewport.
Quite a margin 
Here’s how it looks in Chrome:
The post of interest only occupies the bottom half of the screen and is not even shown in full. Note that there is ample scrolling margin after the post so in principle it’s possible to show it in full.
Indeed, and that’s exactly the problem. I’ve linked to post 36, not 35. Why is post 35 getting shown then?
It works fine in Firefox.
This is by design, the target post is always shown about 25% of the way down the viewport.
We originally had it at the tip-top, but we felt it is harder for people to see it that way. So this isn’t a bug at all.
Interesting, and somewhat disconcerting
I feel like the post I explicitly linked to should be centered vertically, and either highlighted with a flash like Discourse does it today, or even highlighted until the user has scrolled away from the post far enough.
Right now I feel slightly unconfortable passing around links to Discourse posts knowing that people might not read what I intended them to.
There is already a flash / fade when the linked post is opened, and has been since 2013 when the project launched. Here’s a screenshot I took of following your reply in an incognito browser window:
That works as long as you’re looking at the page getting loaded. If you open such a link in a new tab (“read later”) you’ll end up looking at a forum page full of posts, with no clear indication of what you actually intended to read.
It works like intended in 48.0.2.
To me, the simple fact that the URL gets immediately changed to it of another post upon loading is a clear indication that something is off.
The fact that the intended post is (1) not centered, (2) not even shown in full, (3) not permanently highlighted and (4) that the URL gets changed to an earlier post all indicate that even if this is working as intended, I would not consider this a desirable behavior by any measure.
