We have been testing a new flow for filtering replies here on meta.
This has been in core for a few weeks now, and it can be enabled on any up-to-date Discourse site using the enable filtered replies view site setting. When enabled, clicking the “n Replies” button will collapse all posts that are outside that conversation:
The in-reply-to button also does a similar filtering out of posts to help the reader focus on a specific reply flow.
In the videos above, you can also see a sticky bar at the bottom of the page when a filtered conversation is being shown. (There are four kinds of filters, the two mentioned above, replies and in-reply-tos, plus posts by a specific user and topic summaries.)
Feel free to use the replies below to share feedback on this feature.
Personally, I prefer the old approach. Generally, when I click the n Replies button, it’s to get a quick glance at the replies and then I keep scrolling through the topic. The new workflow makes that take much longer.
Right, this is an alternative for people that want a more “threaded” view of the world on their Discourse. It also leverages existing functionality when you filter a topic by user, that is:
enter a long topic
click or tap avatar of a user who posted a few times
It reminds me a bit of how Reddit works, where drilling into a top-level reply opens that reply and all its sub-replies in a new view. Just more streamlined I guess. In that sense I think the features achieves what it sets out to achieve. I just personally wouldn’t want it enabled on Discourse instances I use regularly.