My users are very confused by the two different reply buttons. In particular, many users think that when they see this. . .
they think that it is going to be a private reply.
I’d hate to do it, but I think there would be more clarity if I was able to add “Public Reply to User” or “Public Reply to Topic”
I’m playing around with bother of these options, but I dislike both
I LOVE Discourse, but I’m SO tired of trying to train users.
When a user makes a post and someone wants to reply to the post, the “Reply” arrow as you show above means you are replying to that particular person’s post. The other Reply button is to reply to the topic. To reply privately, you would send the person a PM (Private Message). To do this, after clicking on the reply button at the bottom right of the post you want to reply to and the editor pops up, click on the Reply arrow by the user’s avatar - as your image shows. A menu will pop up giving the option to send a private message to that user.
If you have a “How-to” category for your forum, you can create a Wiki post that can be added to from time to time explaining details such as this. Or you can create a new topic under this category for a more “individualized” way of explaining things. Instead of a “How-to” category, you can use a FAQ category to assist your users. But getting them to read such categories is another task altogether… your “side rant.”
Yep, I have tons of tutorial videos and instructions. Some of my
“digital immigrants” with the new-fangled Discourse.
Here is a tutorial that I made to help solve the problem. Having everything redacted for this forum makes it difficult to read.
It’s nice that you could do that for your users. I have to admit that there are some that seem to need to be held by the hand as they’re walked through. I’ve seen similar tutorials for m8software. The developer made some really nice tutorials… walking users slowly through them with his voice explanation as he went through how to do things. That was really going all out for his software users. Kind of like the old DOS help files that literally explained what each function does, how to use it (and any switches), and how to troubleshoot it… and without having to be online. Which makes me laugh when someone can’t connect, goes to Windows “help” to troubleshoot the problem and Windows tries to connect - because MS’s help files are only online now. 
I would be inclined to pin a topic that says something like ‘this is a public forum, unless you create a new personal message, you are relying publicly’ or similar
Or maybe a sub-banner? That would take up less real estate I think. Either way is better than nothing since most people talk before they think anyway. 
Or maybe don’t worry about this case too much? I think for most people who use forums it’s pretty clear that hitting reply in a forum topic will lead to a reply being posted in the topic, to everyone who has access to that topic. For those who are surprised by this, they will learn as soon as they save their reply.
@sjmscott How many people have complained about this in your community? It has never come up in my community before and we’ve been using discourse for 5 years.
5-6 users have complained that they don’t know when something will be a public or private reply. We are a mostly in-person community and many are over 60.
Assume all replies will be public unless you see strong visual indications otherwise… on Discourse this is primarily the envelope glyph.
This brings up a good point, when composing a message, the reply glyph at upper left should arguably change to the PM glyph
But the “actually post this” button has the PM glyph also, so…
同样的问题也出现在我的网站上。
此外，我还想到，私密消息对话中的编辑器看起来完全一样：
解决方案可以包括在帖子菜单中添加一个额外按钮，让用户选择是公开回复还是私密回复。类似这样的图标就可以实现。
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/email_480334?term=reply\u0026page=1\u0026position=87\u0026page=1\u0026position=87\u0026related_id=480334\u0026origin=search
另一个想法是在编辑器底部添加一个“私密回复”按钮。
所有这些按钮的文本都可以编辑。不过，由于大约有六个不同的“回复”文本，很难区分它们。
我使用个人消息气泡主题组件，从视觉上清晰地区分某人是在使用私信（DM/PM）还是在发布普通话题帖子。这似乎有助于减少混淆。
他们讨论的是对私信（PM）的第二或第三条回复，该回复确实带有正常的回复图标。
在这种情况下，他们需要检查该主题的可见性。
此操作在以下链接中完成：
非常好，这是一个出色的改进，有助于缓解一些困惑——感谢提醒 @sjmscott 
太棒了，谢谢！
看来回复私信的提交按钮似乎也已被更改。
这意味着我们可以自定义帖子的提交按钮文本，而不会影响私信编辑器。我们可以将“回复”改为更明确的表述，例如“发布回复”或“公开回复”。
不过，我并未完全确信这能彻底解决最初的问题。当回复特定帖子时，编辑器顶部的行仍然看起来像是在向某人发送回复，而非向社区发送。用于切换帖子/回复类型的按钮仍然很难被识别为按钮。
我认为添加一个简单的向下箭头图标 ⌄ 作为视觉提示，将有助于将该元素识别为下拉菜单。
我强烈反对这种更改，因为它在视觉上显得杂乱。轮廓已足以传达按钮的含义，而且现在每个帖子类型的图标变化更多，按钮的动态特性也因此表现得更加生动：
Discourse 可以为新用户弹出一个小型教育面板（除非用户在注册时选择退出），解释该按钮是什么以及它的用途，cc @tobiaseigen。这是“即时教育”的另一个例子，尽管在我看来，这略显薄弱，因为这属于面向高级用户的功能。
