The 'reply' option - what does it do/what is it for?

[ColumboTheBestDetective]

Ok, my first ever thread on MN, but... am I the only person who doesn't actually understand what on earth the point of the 'reply' option is on a thread? I see threads where it's really hard to work out who the OP is replying to, and many more with pp saying, 'Oh, I thought I was replying to... , but I've only just realised I'm not!'. All these seem to be genuine misunderstandings on the part of the OP/pp

So what is the 'reply' option for? @MNHQ? And how does it actually work? Because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only confused mn poster right now!

(And I'm not even sure that @MNHQ even works? Can someone clarify if so/if not? And if not, who should I be tagging to get this query seen?!)

Same, really confuses me in threads!

I’ve always wondered this too 😅

It does fuck all.

Hi there @ColumboTheBestDetective. It is very much not just you, don't worry!

There have been several threads about it in Site Stuff and we're very much aware that it's not really very useful as it is. We're right now in the process of running some tests to work out how all the navigation buttons would work best, and a change to the Reply button will be part of that, so it should be sorted soon.

It's worse than useless.

It does nothing at all - any post you make using the Reply button will just appear on the thread like any other post. There is nothing to link it with the post you are 'replying' to.

However, people very understandably believe that the post they are 'replying' to will be linked or referenced in some way. This is why you often see posts which are obviously a reply to something, but which make no sense at all because there's no context.

This has been going on for ages and I find it hard to understand why it was set up this way in the first place, let alone why it's been going on for so long.

Yeah, it’s a bit daft. Most other forums I’ve used would automatically quote the relevant post if you clicked ‘reply’ so it’s not surprising that that’s what people are expecting to happen. The quote function hidden under the three dots is not exactly intuitive.

Apologies for only just remembering to come back to this thread (comes from being the first one I've ever started 😅) but prompted to look it up again after yet another reply to the other thread on site stuff about the reply (mis)function.

I believe it is @DappledThings who has had the idea to reply with a standard 'you may not realise this, but...' reply to anyone on any thread who has (in all good faith) used the 'reply' option, not realising it is actually (less than) useless. I am on board with that. Every day I see threads where the poor OP, or other PP have clearly used 'reply' thinking they're 'quoting'. It's making threads worse than awful to follow.

@HebeMumsnet it's been just over a month since the main thread (I would like a reply to the 'Reply' issue) has had a reply from anyone at MNHQ, and yet daily people are adding to that main thread. When will the main thread get another response (with or without a solution) from MNHQ? Because we're all waiting... in (forlorn) hope you will listen to those who have advised how it could be done better!

Hi there @ColumboTheBestDetective. We do appreciate that this is taking longer than we would all like. There's been no further response from us on the other thread simply because there has been no more news since our last update. We are hopeful we'll have some news about the issue soon though and we will update on the thread as soon as that happens. Thanks for your patience.