Prevent Reply to Post showing as a Reply to topic?

[giphymarker (Garett)]

Hey everyone! I just set up my first Discourse forum woot woot!

When someone replies to a post, it also shows up essentially as it’s own post. Is there a way to change this so the post replies are only visible by expanding the post?

I feel like it will make things more streamlined. Let me know!

[Jonathan5]

I don’t think so, but this might help you to an extent:

Discourse CAN show nested replies?

These aren’t nested replies the way you’d expect from nested commenting systems, these are duplicates of replies that happen later in the conversation. The idea is that this makes it a little easier to see far-flung responses in close context of what they’re replying to. There’s also an alternative option for this feature that temporarily hides the posts in-between replies rather than duplicating them (which moves away from the appearance of nesting). That site setting is called enable filtered…

[giphymarker (Garett)]

Thanks for the reply. I think nested replies would be a great feature, but maybe I’m in the minority

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

It’s a commonly used way to show branching replies, but it comes with its own downsides. Some of the thought behind Discourse sticking to a flat discussion structure is covered here:

Web Discussions: Flat by Design

[giphymarker (Garett)]

Ok I don’t mind the idea of flat by design and I see the benefit, however it has it’s draw backs as well. Could this be changed with a theme so if we wanted to try it, we would have the option?

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

Hi Garett, welcome here

Nested replies are likely not to happen on Discourse and it’s not on the roadmap. It would be huge work.
Even if someone was to develop a plugin to implement such a feature, it should probably be heavily maintained not to break along Discourse’s core changes over time.

Here’s a Discourse team member’s reply made to someone on Marketplace who wanted to have nested replies:

@saquetim

nesting posts properly is a really large project to get done right.

In the frontend, you can get 90% of the job done relatively quickly, but as soon as you start using it, many things break, and the other 10% is really hard.

There is a lot of code in Discourse that expects the post to be displayed/read in a linear order.

There are also server-side implications that would need to be addressed, like how to keep track of unread posts, etc.

[satonotdead]

I think the universal forum approach wants a single discussion, with possibilities to link and mention another ones.

Threaded discussions sounds more like Reddit, Slack or Discord: social media, teams and trivial chat (not forum systems).

[giphymarker (Garett)]

Thank you guys. I appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

You’re welcome! We, whether we are regular members or part of the team, do our best to help here