Something I miss here that Google Groups does

Meta
#1

A discussion can very easily turn into multiple threads within the same discussion, as a person replies to one post in the discussion, and another person replies to another post within the discussion.

The fork thread within the one discussion can be numerous and go in very different directions within that one discussion. That’s actually quite awesome.

However …

In Google Groups, I can see within a discussion the stream of posts in a particular thread within that discussion but clicking on “…” at the bottom of one post, to see the contextual thread within the discussion.

I’m not seeing that capability here. For example, I’m having a really hard time making sense of the different threads in Smart columns to make use of wide screens. I can look at one posted reply, find at the bottom of it the post related to the reply, but then I have to scroll up to find that post and figure out what it was replying to.

So hard to make heads or tails of what anybody is talking about. And the text column being narrow, I’m finding myself scrolling up and down something silly to try and figure out the various threads.

If it is possible to have discourse show at the bottom of a reply the whole stream of related posts within that thread, distinct from the other threads within the discussion, that would be a huge help.

#2

Yes. In the bottom left hand corner of the first post, or any replies, look for a note like 1 Reply. It has a little down arrow and when you click on it, it will show you the replies all in a row.

Of course, people actually have to click reply on the thing they are replying to, rather than just adding a reply to the top post :slight_smile:

This will be more useful if there actually ARE longer threads.

#3

Yeah, nice to see all replies to one post, but that does not help to follow a particular stream of replies within a thread, distinguishing that thread from other threads within a conversation.

These multiple threads are of value, but only if they are easy to follow.

Just saying, it is an extremely useful thing that’s very hard to be without.

Maybe some discourse guru can find a plugin (or whatever) for discourse that can help with that.

#4

I am saying that it already does that (there are replies in the thread that have their own replies).

If people don’t reply to a particular post — thread a topic — then it won’t show.

It’s like everyone in Google Groups replying to just the original email.