# Way to find parent post (not list of all ancestors scrolled to the top of the list)

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/way-to-find-parent-post-not-list-of-all-ancestors-scrolled-to-the-top-of-the-list/342965>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [December 17, 2024, 6:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/way-to-find-parent-post-not-list-of-all-ancestors-scrolled-to-the-top-of-the-list/342965 "2024-12-17T18:27:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![curi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e68b1a/32.png) [@curi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/curi)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 8:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/way-to-find-parent-post-not-list-of-all-ancestors-scrolled-to-the-top-of-the-list/342965/5 "2024-12-17T20:33:03Z")

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I’m happy to mostly read linearly and don’t want to switch to fully threaded discussions like on reddit. But when people write a reply with no quotation then it’s often to one of the most recent 10 posts, and I need a quick way to see the text it’s a reply to. I do occasionally need to trace back replies a few levels.

Someone mentioned a “max reply history” setting but then I think they quickly deleted their post. That was really helpful. My forum had that set to 5, but the default of 1 will work better for me. This makes the important “in reply to” relationship that you mentioned much easier to access.

With this setting change, finding the immediate parent works much better and I’m happier.

Going back multiple parents now works better than before but is less convenient than on Reddit. You expand the parent, then read it, then scroll back up to the top of it (usually easy; a hassle for very long posts), then click jump to parent. Then you can expand its parent and repeat.

As a minor FYI, I sometimes use the print page view or URL edit to get the markdown for a page in order to view long topics all loaded on one page at once so I can cmd-F them and skim them more easily. In these views, figuring out what the parent is for a post can be a problem, but I still mostly prefer these linear views over trying to look through large topics on Reddit with its nested display.

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