Tree of Savior Forum

Indicate who replied to whom

First of all, let me say that I really like the layout and functionality of the forums. It first took some getting used to, but now that I’m used to it, it works great.

There’s just one thing that I think could use improving. Look at the following image:

@alexiell57 has replied to @Daenerys, and you can see this at the top-right of his post. However, @Daenerys’s reply isn’t as obviously a reply, because the indicator is missing at the top-right of his (her?) post. And @alexiell57’s post also doesn’t show it has replies at the bottom-left of his post. This is because @Daenerys’s reply is right below the post he is replying to.

The reason this isn’t good design is because it’s difficult to differentiate between replies to posts (like @Daenerys’s reply) or simple posts within the thread (like @web_nervepress’s post). This makes it hard to sometimes follow the flow of discussions.

So, my suggestion is to include that reply indicator at the top-right of a reply and at the bottom-left of the original post, even if the reply is right below the post it replies to. Err, hopefully this isn’t too confusing? It’s pretty simple, but I have trouble explaining it in an easy way…

2 Likes

oops… that misclick.

Anyhow, the lack of ‘reply’ showing up is user ‘error’.
If you click ‘reply’ in the bottom right of a post, it will reply specifically to that post.
If you click ‘reply’ at the bottom of the thread it won’t.

People flip back and forth between both randomly.

While that might be true sometimes, it is not always true. In Discourse there is no visual distinction between replying to a topic and replying to the last post.

Quote from the co-founder of Discourse:

By default, we suppress in-reply-to indicators for single replies directly underneath the post. It is implied by locality and would be extremely noisy if on by default. You can turn this suppression off in site settings if you like.

The best way around this is to just quote the person you are replying to, which I think is even more noisy.


Here is actually a good example of how it works:

You will notice that the top post has 2 replies, but the post under it doesn’t look like one of those replies because there is no indicator…

Or is it? (it is)

3 Likes

My apologies then. I was at least half wrong if not entirely so.

Yep, this is exactly what I’m talking about. So, it can be turned off in site settings, huh? @Staff_Julie, @STAFF_Ethan or @STAFF_John… Can either of you look at this in the site settings?

It’s no wonder I wasn’t seeing the reply indicator on the top right corner of my replies. I keep discovering new things about this forum one after another.

I don’t think this particular feature can be changed, though. I think the forum was just built this way. :confused:

Odd. The quote from the co-founder (thanks, @Daenerys!) shows that it’s something that can be changed in the site settings?

By default, we suppress in-reply-to indicators for single replies directly underneath the post. It is implied by locality and would be extremely noisy if on by default. You can turn this suppression off in site settings if you like.