# Moving post-specific reply indicator into the editor

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-post-specific-reply-indicator-into-the-editor/31899>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [8 أغسطس 2015، 11:09ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-post-specific-reply-indicator-into-the-editor/31899 "2015-08-08T11:09:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![erlend\_sh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/erlend_sh/32/119475_2.png) [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)\
**Post date:** [8 أغسطس 2015، 11:09ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-post-specific-reply-indicator-into-the-editor/31899/1 "2015-08-08T11:09:43Z")

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Continuing the discussion from:

- [Visual distinction between reply to last comment and reply to original post](https://meta.discourse.org/t/visual-distinction-between-reply-to-last-comment-and-reply-to-original-post/27501),
- [Adopt mobile styling for post-reply button](https://meta.discourse.org/t/adopt-mobile-styling-for-post-reply-button/23451/10)

> [@downey](#):
>
> We’re having an increasing number of users accidentally click the “Reply” button on the last post in a topic, thinking they’re replying to the original author. This causes lots of problems for threading and notifications too, I think.

> [@Matthew\_Mintun](#):
>
> I’m getting a lot of heat from my community director that this “Reply” per post and “Reply” to topic is ultra confusing for our users. This would fix it

I’d like to propose a solution that builds on my suggestion from [“A lot of weirdness caused by moving posts around”](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-lot-of-weirdness-caused-by-moving-posts-around/24486). (A similar solution was [implemented in Flarum](http://discuss.flarum.org/d/422/unable-to-quote-cross-topics/1), except it used a unique post-ID instead of a post:topic combo.)

The idea being that if the “Reply (-to specific post”) button was just a special forum syntax instead of a unique UI element, it’d come with a lot of wins:

- Less “magic”; it’s just part of the editor and the universal concept of linking.
- Can reply to multiple posts
- Replies are easily changed or unlinked entirely by simply removing the link
- The logic for Replies is more aligned with Quotes

So when you click on the “Reply” button, you’d get something like this in your editor:

`@foouser#27:43598`

Which would look like this in the preview:

![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/5/5/55bbeece4d6010864a9d33591d68dc68968543fa.jpg)

Full example:

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/1/f/1fe0023b18c7020e3df2614c53d310eb03f8d70b.jpg) 

My hypothesis is that this more effectively communicates that there’s nothing special about your reply - It won’t start a nested sub-thread or anything - besides the fact that you’re mentioning this specific user’s post.

p.s. I’m putting this in Feature instead of UX because implementing this goes beyond pixel pushing.

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