Discourse [finally] rolled out functionality to allow nested replies; where a reply is sorted under its parent in a tree view rather than just flattened to the bottom. I enabled it immediately.
There are a couple of options that I might still play with as we see how it goes.
While this is a nice feature I personally find it harder to read threads this way. Especially when returning to a thread and just wanting to see the new posts. Is there any option for an individual user to disable it and see threads the old way? I tried looking for an option but couldn’t find one.
Yeah, I’m also finding this harder.
Oofduh. So when I was first reading the change notes, I swear it said that users would be able to flatten a discussion (back to what it looked like before) by clicking something in the view. That probably boosted my confidence to just turn the nesting on. But now, I can’t find a way for a user to do that, and I can’t find whatever I saw that made think it would be possible. Which is dissappointing.
I agree too. I feel like it’s easier to read a thread, but harder to find new posts. Part of that is also because when the original thread was “flat”, it didn’t really matter which reply button you used, so people weren’t intentional about replying to a comment or replying to the original post, or, or, or… But that’s something that should also get better as users get used to it.
I’m going to think about it a little longer. Please feel free to continue to discuss. But I am contemplating turning the nesting back off.
Very much this. If there was a straightforward way to jump to the next unread comment that could reduce the problems very significantly.
It seems it isn’t possible, and isn’t an upcoming feature. One of their Devs said on their support forum:
We don’t want this to be a user’s decision or preference. It’s up to the administers to decide how their site should function. The two paradigms are very different and users shouldn’t be interacting so differently on the same content. That’s our current thought at least.
I also have a really hard time with the new setting. Like the “FINAL 2026 WFTDA Champs Bid Allocation” topic shows up on top with new replies but I had to scroll up and down through the page several times to find it.
Yep. It took me longer than it should’ve to find the most recent reply in that thread too. I turned it off.