In forumedit page of forum, the title of post you are replying to is not a link.

Look just below that one line and you'll see:

Replying To: ...

which is a link.

Yes, but it is weird looking ID, and normal unconscious behaviour is to click on the name of the Topic or Thread instead of ID.

It is only a simple suggestion for consideration.

I am confused by your suggestion and apparent unconscious behavior. The page to which the "Replying To:" link links is the one you seem to want linked under a link referring to the whole thread. Yet the linked page already shows the whole thread, but it also highlights one post within the thread, (as is done for all links to the thread), the post being replied to. Clearly, the greater specificity of the "Replying To:" tag is appropriate.

Regarding "it is weird looking ID": I suppose you are saying that its meaning was too opaque to escape an unconscious scan/ignore process. Maybe it would work better if, instead of the replied-to post's hash, the post number was displayed as the link tag. Then it would be more obvious and more often be noticed for what it is.

It is only a simple suggestion for consideration.

I would suggest instead that the post number appear in the replied-to link.

I would suggest instead that the post number appear in the replied-to link.

Post numbers are transient. While you're responding to a post, someone might respond to a separate up-thread post, invalidating that number. Those numbers are only valid while rendering a thread, and at by the time we land o the 'response' page, that number has been lost.

Sidebar: it's been on my TODO list for 2+ years to ajaxify the forum interface, such that responses would be written directly in the thread instead of a separate page, but there's apparently no end of other higher priorities which crop up and keep that from happening.

What I have observed is that once a post is posted, its post number, as decorated with a fractional part, is fixed. Once it can be replied to, the number cannot change. I think maybe you are thinking of the post number for the post being edited.

Once it can be replied to, the number cannot change. I think maybe you are thinking of the post number for the post being edited.

No, i was thinking of the problem more abstractly and invented a case which isn't even a possibility here so can be ignored :).

The part about the numbers not being readily available in the response page holds, though. The numbers are specific to the thread-display page. Calculating the serial numbers for the response page would require loading the whole thread just to figure out that one number. Yes, possible, but a huge overhead just to show a serial number.

forumedit suggestion is not a link and I suggest making it a link, letting you to go back to the thread and recheck the conversation to answer.

You're requesting that it link back to the very top of the thread? That's what a link to the thread's title would imply to me. That's something we can do but would, IMO, cause confusion because it's very rare that one wants to jump back to the top of the thread when responding anywhere deeper than the top post. People would click on that, find themselves at the top of the thread, start searching for the response they're responding to, then be frustrated that the link didn't take them there directly.

If you're requesting that it link back to the post you're responding to, you'll need a more compelling argument than "it's what I'm used to," as we've had the existing equivalent feature for at least a year without a single complaint that it's "strange" (in fact, it was added by request of a user). All forum posts in this software are referenced by their hash, so a hash is the "natural" way to reference them.

A counter-proposal: how about changing the top 2 lines to a single line in the form:

Replying to HASH_WITH_LINK_TO_POST in thread TITLE_WITH_LINK_TO_TOP_OF_THREAD

That would, IMO, make it clear/clearer where that link leads to.

(That said: IIRC we split that onto 2 lines in the first place because thread titles can be arbitrarily long.)

:-?

How about just making "Replying to" into the link without the hash? It already reaches the whole thread, top of which is rarely of interest.

I'm not finding the "weird" or "not habitual" argument compelling, but displaying the hash of the linked post/thread display is presenting needless extra information, inviting thoughts along the lines of "What is that?" And it's very easy to see it in most browsers that let users see what URL the link is to by hovering over the link tag.

I'd argue that a thread link is useful for posting to someone else. "Hey, you may wish to check this thread out." If composing or editing, the browser URL in the address bar isn't helpful.

The 'Replying to: xxx' is just noise. While 692d8cabe1 is useful for someone, for the reader of the forum or thread its pointless.

Suggestion ...

Thread: forumedit suggestion

Replying to: Stephan Beal (stephan) on 2022-11-24 13:15

(Time was also amended, removing the seconds... I know we like granularity, but jees....)

So there are only two links - the forum post, and the thread.

Ask 50 people and you'll get 99 suggestions, so ... meh .. my pointless suggestion. ;)

In forumedit page of forum, the title of post you are replying to is not a link.

After some off-list discussion we've edited the header of that page to hopefully be more readily understandable. That change is now live on this server.

The 'Replying to: xxx' is just noise.

In practice, it's really not for some of us. i make use of it several times a day and Larry has expressed his appreciation for it off list.

So there are only two links - the forum post, and the thread.

Let's see how the current approach comes out. It's just a reformulation/compacting of the previous one. Adding the time and OP's name feels like noise to me (for this particular forum software, anyway).

"One of these days" the forum will be ajaxified, with responses being made directly in the thread without an intermediary page, and all of this will be moot.

Ask 50 people and you'll get 99 suggestions, so ... meh .. my pointless suggestion. ;)

That is absolutely correct, but the one writing the code is normally the one who gets to select which of those 99 gets implemented ;).

So there are only two links - the forum post, and the thread.

Those reach precisely the same content except with a different post highlighted¹.

Frequently, an initial post is just the beginning of getting to the real issue. It has no special status as "the thread".

1. ^{^} This is taking "the thread" to mean all the posts displayed with #1 (or its successor) highlighted. There is no "just the thread" display.

Thank you Stephan. It is now more clear as I am typing this replay.