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.