Why is there no 'Watch Thread' at the top of a thread now?

[PunishmentRoundupWithJoon]

Didn't the 'watch thread' button used to be at the top of the thread?? It seems it's now way down at the bottom which means lots of scrolling. What was the reasoning for this? It's a real pain.

Agreed, it's really annoying having to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the thread to find it. It's not like it's been moved to make way for anything, there's still a big empty space where it used to be on both desktop and mobile

The watch option is now located at the bottom right of the OP. Our goal is to reduce clutter at the top of threads and make them easier to use, so we’re testing placing it in the OP post, where we expect most people decide to watch (if not at the end of the thread). Your feedback that it wasn’t easy to find is helpful though, and we’ll take that back to the team for discussion.

It's not a pain at all. Usually people have read through a thread and are already at the bottom when they decide to watch it. Or have commented, which takes you to the bottom. Far better to have it there at the bottom than to have to scroll all the way back to the top of a thread, particularly on long ones that go to hundreds of posts.

It's very inconvenient as, at times, we may not scroll right to the end of a page, or the thread, before deciding to 'watch' it. We may be in a rush and mark it was 'watched' so that we know to return to it later and receive updates.

It was far easier to use when at the beginning of the thread. And I've just checked a couple of threads, and for me the 'watch' button is on the left, not the right. I'm on a chromebook.

Yeah, it's not particularly obvious there. Because every other post has the bookmark button in that position, you don't tend to expect to find a different button there just for the OP. I've known its there for a few days now but still keep heading up to the top of the thread to try and watch it.

The thing that's good about having at the top is that you don't have to go looking for it. Generally I'll watch a thread once I've read all of OPs posts. Usually, I can just spin the scrolly wheel on my mouse once (or thumb up on mobile) to get back to the top of the page, and hit watch. Now I either have to scroll back to the top, then back down a bit to find the bottom of OPs post, or scroll down to the bottom of the page and then back up a bit to find the end of the thread.

Before, it was always in exactly the same place on the page, no matter how long OPs post was, or how many replies the thread had. Now it's position changes, and so rather than just use muscle memory you actually have to pay attention to the position of it.

I still see it at the top on the App for iPhone.