…hmmmm, I went clicking around here in Meta more, and in places I am seeing exactly the behavior I want (although maybe my initial post didn’t explain it well):
Here’s a topic https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginners-guide-to-install-discourse-on-windows-10-for-development/75149…
Both the reply on the first post, and the reply-to-topic at the very end, do what I want [to do intentionally in my community].
- I see the reply control suggesting I can reply
- when I do, it defaults to my creating a linked-topic: