I suspect that most of the time when replying the average person doesn’t need to see the “reply as linked topic” option at all… and some people might not need to ever see it; showing it 100% of the time seems like overkill.
I wonder if there’s a better way to educate people about the possibility of switching reply types?
Very rough mockup:
So we could show this under specific circumstances… brand new users already have a lot to learn, but maybe if you’re a newish user that has posted 20+ replies, and you’re replying to a 100+ reply topic or something in that general area?
(We do already have the composer-specific popup for things like the “similar topic” warning, which is also an option… but I like these little popups that point to the functionality specifically).