I noticed there’s a few different ways to reply.
I’m unclear which method of replying I should use, and when. Can anyone clarify this for me?
Also how do I quote someone else’s post, as I have seen others do in replies here?
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There are four ways to reply.
-
The
button at the bottom of the topic. This replies to the overall topic. -
The
button on each individual post. This replies to that particular post / person. -
Highlight text with your mouse or finger in a post. You should see a
button appear above the highlighted text. Click that, then begin. (You can do this many times to multi-quote a bunch of posts.) -
in the right gutter. Use this when you want to go on a crazy tangent that may or may not relate to the topic at hand. No big, just create a new topic. They’ll get automatically linked together.
Note that the reply panel will show you who you replying to, if anyone — their avatar will show up above your input area in the form of
If you aren’t replying to a person you’ll just see the topic title there.
I hope that helps.
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That’s right, Discourse has a reply for every situation!
If you’re just interested in replying to the topic in general, the Reply button at the bottom of the topic is the way to go:
If your reply is targeted at a specific post within the topic, you can make sure that your post is directly linked to it using the Reply button under the chosen post:
Started writing a general reply before deciding it’d be better suited linked to a previous post? Don’t worry, clicking the Reply button on the post will update what your reply references without losing your work!
Once your reply has been submitted, you’ll have an expandable panel at the upper right showing which post you replied to:
This works both ways – the replied-to post will have an expandable list of replies as well, making it easy to keep track of where the conversation’s going as well as where it’s been.
(note that these indicators are suppressed for single reply posts directly above and below)
Sometimes you’re only interested in reply to specific parts of a post, however:
Luckily, Discourse makes quoting easy. All you have to do is select the text you want to quote with your mouse, and a “quote reply” button will come up to add the quoted text to your post:
Of course, it’s always important to stay on topic when replying. When the discussion starts taking you in a new direction, it might be time to use Discourse’s final form of replying, “reply as linked topic”:
This will let you start a brand new topic that’ll be linked to the post you’re replying to, keeping the flow of conversation well-organized.
One final note – Discourse also supports mentioning specific users if you want to make sure your reply catches a particular person’s eye. And with that, happy replying @johnsmith.
JINX!
I want to emphasize one particular section of what that Tim posted:
If you just want to ping people that you’re talking to (or about) then @name mentions are the way to go. We auto-complete names when you begin typing the @, prioritizing people in the current topic:
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