Forum : replies and comments

Hey guys,

I think the way the comments and replies are shown in the forum are suboptimal.

Here’s an example but it’s not about the content, it’s about the way comments and replies are presented.
On the picture above, you can see that when someone replies to a comment, a button “Replies” appears. But then also, the comments are doubled below in another section of the thread.

example_forum

Can we simply remove the additional (doubled) comments and just keep the replies?
With this simply change, the forum would be way more user-friendly and the conversations would be flowing.

What do you guys think? Is this possible with Discourse?

Thanks.

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Hi brother, I know we spoke about this a while ago and I’m totally in agreement. I looked in the settings and also searched around the web and it doesn’t seem clear if it’s possible.

I did find this post:

But it seems to be addressing a slightly different topic. We already have “remove full quote” enabled and you can see the other option looks to be even more clunky. Agree?

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Yes I agree it’s already a good thing that there is no full quote replicas.

Let’s see if someone from the community knows how to put it a step further by removing the doubled comments. I’d be surprise if it’s not possible at all. It’s the standard comment presentation on most platforms.

Thanks for joining the discussion.

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I have posted a Topic on discourse forum with this question.

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Great idea, thanks @joris! :slight_smile:

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cc: @Mik

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The Discourse support person brings a useful label to the discussion: “threaded”. That’s really the proposal, to switch the forum to a threaded view.

Personally, I would not be in favor of this if it were possible. Why? The reply button that expands the view of replies to a single post is not immediately obvious. It took me months of using this forum to ever discover it and start using it. Not displaying replies in the main thread creates the possibility that they don’t get read by people who aren’t aware of the feature or happen to scan over the fact that a given post has replies.

I like the ability to reference a previous post without my post becoming hidden in the main thread. This, by the way, is the same way Telegram works. You can view a thread of replies to a given message, but all messages appear in the chat. Ultimately it’s a question of preference–some people like threaded discussion displays and others do not. Likewise, providing the option to the user on a case by case basis would be the ultimate solution here :slight_smile:

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That makes sense. If we can have it on a case by case basis, that would be great.

I also understand your preference. Let’s leave it that way for now and if someone finds a way to personalize the comments+replies presentation, it could be implemented.

Thanks.

1 Like