Testing Nested Replies on Meta

Hey everyone

Some very smart people on our team created a very experimental plugin to explore how a nested / threaded model view for topics would feel in Discourse.

Use this topic to test the look and feel of this experiment!

WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR BUG REPORTS, by definition this is a very buggy experiment. We are interested in how it integrates with our classic Topic view, and if this may be a good idea for some communities as an optional thing, either via global, category or user setting.

Let the testing begin!

How do I quote your post?

Looks like

everyone

is @trust_level_3 ?

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As is tradition, TL3 are getting an early peek, we can open for all tomorrow .

Our lovely TL3s deserve it!

Yeah quoting is broken in nested view at the moment. @Falco it’s actually interesting if you quote someone, we should probably open up the composer in reply to the quoted post by default. EDIT: That’s how it works in flat mode now, so I didn’t just come up with a revolutionary idea.

Exactly how deep does this go? Getting very reddity vibes

There is one way to find out

Lesssgooooo

Finding out right now

Finding out right now!

Let’s go deeper reply

In the midnight hour… I want more, more, more.

Things are getting small now. What happenswithreallylongwords?

Are we hitting the wall?

Or images

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Ok we are hitting the wall

nah no walls here, we can go FOREVER! there will be a shadow thread created at some point.. “Continue this conversation” link, and then we can continue to nest infinitely

I’m actually shocked we didn’t hit it yet EDIT: Lol we hit it. cc @RGJ

Clicking on the wrong reply button is now much more visible

Who’s allowed to kick the tires here at the moment?

(Another upvoter from me for this feature: Allow users with access to a restricted category to see who else has access)

The share dialog works as a hint for those who cannot check the category permissions.

But of course, that only tells me about groups I am allowed to see. Maybe you also added e.g., some customer groups that are not visible for me But the feature wouldn’t tell me about those either, which is why I think the category description is still a great place to tell users such information about a category.

Long threads won’t stop me from using polls

wow this is great.

well done team.

Two things I think I saw happen that were a bit unexpected to me:

1. Clicking into a topic via a notification turned it into flat view – pretty sure I didn’t do that explicitly
2. Clicking in after seeing Lilly’s most recent reply put me at the OP, rather than her reply (though I don’t know what I do expect)

Well the mobile experience isn’t great…

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Clicking in after seeing Lilly’s most recent reply put me at the OP

When clicking your reply for some reason it appeared at the top despite me having the thread set to “top”, don’t know if this is intended or not but it felt weird to me:

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Mobile view is a bit funky at very deep levels of nesting

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I figured out it is possible to scroll horizontally, but the part of the screen for the deep post stays narrow.

Oh, maybe I’m doing it wrong, eh?

Deserving a nested view is more like a curse…

Nice to see it in action, though I quite dislike this format in general for, I guess, the same reasons it was never included in Discourse before.

I suppose many customers and potential customers asked for this. I hope it will not be too hard for you to maintain this along with the regular flat view!

And also that people who design themes won’t have a hard time taking this new feature into account.

Anyway, congrats to the people who designed and coded it: it works, looks nice, and feels oddly seamless
Always nice to see experiments, regardless of whether they are eventually released or not!

This is pretty cool. Will go well with Refditish thene

This is cool but I’ve never been so confused on Discourse

Well, uh… this was NOT what I expected! But on desktop, it actually doesn’t look too bad (except for me not being used to small avatars).

Also flairs seem a little wonky:

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Wait a minute! That wasn’t a bug! That was UX .

I have to switch my phone to landscape mode to even see the reply button at this point but the quest shall continue!

I’m seeing an unread indicator:

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But I can’t seem to find the post? How would Discourse know if that post has been read? Do I have to open up the threading really deep to find that?

BUT I WANT TO MUTE THIS TOPIC AND I CAN’T

The absolutely worst thing with Reddit is how you can get completely lost in a very short space of time - what reply relates to what, and why do I have to click things to expand? Ew!

I am confident that you are capable of achieving this In flat mode, it works just like in any other topic

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hardcore / oldschool / power users will hate this, and as much as we might dislike it or find it confusing or even “anti-discourse”, it seems there are new admins who want this feature nowadays (especially farcebook migrations).

i can see it making sense and working for certain types of forums and community structures, but it’s pretty horrendous for the general linear topic discussion that Discourse is designed for (and many of us are accustomed to). it has that Reddit buried rabbit holes of degraded comments problem, and mega-topics could get especially unruly and really difficult to follow. doesn’t take me long to click the flat mode button.

for example, i think it would be useful in a forum where different people are sharing photos in a topic and people want to comment each specific post.

i know this is super difficult to build into Discourse, so it’s impressive that this works as well as it does.

I somehow arrived at a scoped view without realizing it (perhaps through a notification?)

https://meta.discourse.org/nested/testing-nested-replies-on-meta/398759?post_number=43&sort=new

I was very confused about where the other replies I had remembered seeing before (and making myself) went. Thought perhaps some “cleanup on aisle 5” had already been done and those posts were just gone.

Then I scrolled up an noticed the “View full thread” link:

Screenshot 2026-03-19 at 5.35.10 AM1047×176 10.2 KB

Perhaps I would have noticed it sooner if it were placed somewhere sticky?

One thing I don’t like on reddit is how they handle hidden +XX replies. If you click on it the first time, it just shows additonal replies. At this stage is ok. But for deeper levels, if you click on +YY replies, it loads a different page, loading only these new comments. This is slow (because their site sucks I guess), and going back to the previous contact by pressing the browser’s back button or the offered options (full comments, single comment threads…) isn’t very elegant.

Currently it works a bit the same on Discourse.

Here’s a concept of nested deep navigation I thought about that perhaps would make the nested experience more pleasant:

https://gemini.google.com/share/7aaaa210dcb6

I think working on a nested view is a good opportunity to think about how the information is displayed to users, how they navigate through this information, and come up with ideas that might be more creative and functional than the “Reddit way”.

Just m
essing
with y
ou, sm
artpho
ne use
rs

Lol this is a pretty good troll. Well done.

Yeah when the post_number param is present in a link you get taken to the specific tree that, that post is in. Agreed on it not being visually clear enough, but I think the general pattern is correct. Thanks for testing!!!

Thinking more about this, i have an actual use-case for this on a by-category or by-topic basis. I run a sports fan forum and we do multiple sports pools throughout the year. we have specific topics for our weekly game picks and members like to comment on each other’s selections. this leads to an issue where there are multiple threads of discussion in a topic and keeping track or recording the picks can be a challenge when they are buried amongst other replies. having embedded commenting enabled would make it much easier for people to comment on each other’s initial posts, while maintaining a sense of organization for the purpose of the topic, that is, for the users to make their weekly game picks.

Yup, the whole idea is to offer it where it makes sense. For example sites discussing current news, or with 10000’s of active users where the linear model doesn’t scale super well.

Doesn’t make much sense for smaller communities I do agree, but don’t we want Discourse to be used by all!?

Yes @Lilly that is the spirit! You hit the nail in the head!

We built this experiment with category level toggles, it is how we see most of the existing communities adopt it.

This is now open for TL0+

BTW, y’all can also create new topics for testing in this category!

Flat view will always be the number one, this is just an option

Most simple themes won’t have much trouble, we are reusing the post object so most stuff carries well over.

Topic view changes will have to adapt, but it is not like we are making this a default.

That’s the spirit!

hah, sorry i wasn’t meaning to suggest it wasn’t useful or shouldn’t be pursued - i know very well that certain orgs want this and i totally understand why. it’s great that Discourse is expanding it’s capabilities to adapt.

i could also see a use case for certain types of journaling, like meetup photo topics!

Damn, this is really cool! Check this out @awesomerobot

Ooh, I saw this on github not that long ago while looking for something else and got all excited glad to see it getting tested out here.

I really, really like the nested replies. I’m migrating a community that used to be a livejournal community back in the day, and nested replies are good for our case where a thread may start general but then end up with lots of branches in different directions. The typical discourse flat view wasn’t very intuitive for how our conversations usually go but we were prepared to make it work; this is a nice format for communities with a “lineage” like ours and more like the formats we’re used to reading.

To me it feels very intuitive so far and I like the reddit-y collapse replies buttons. Very much looking forward to seeing how this evolves

It would be interesting to also have an option to toggle view of topic.

Yup, I’ve been pushing for this to be a user preference somehow, but some people are skeptic about it.

Personally I think having it in a user setting makes sense in line with the other ways Discourse allows per-user granular customization for eg watching/muting tags/categories/topics.

staying true to many threaded discussion platforms

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I really dig this electrical wiring/network representation with the cute corners and the fact it links the avatars, really nice

I pushed some fixes to make mobile at least.. useable.

we still have a scrollbar but this is amazing

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I get that it’s an early version and you probably already thought of it, but just in case, it would be great if the data-user-id attribute were added to each post.

Other data- attributes are also missing, which makes me think you are well-aware of this.

I use custom CSS to target my posts (on meta), and I can’t do it in the nested view

Post delted by author no reports

Is it possible for the preference of Top/New/Old to be saved the next time one enters the topic?

As a ex-Redditor this nested way is familiar for me lol

My largest community often ends up with people responding to the wrong person because the lack of threading confuses them, confusing the discourse, and I believe threading would improve this situation. Glad to see the possibility of this feature coming.

I just had to switch to flat mode to read your post.

For me it wasn’t intuitive to find it.

It might be that it’s hard to find for high-volume posts, but my site has basically no high-volume posts, to a first approximation. It’s generally lower-volume, but often people don’t select and hit “quote” to make it clear to whom they are responding, and then confusion ensues.

While this mega-thread may be a stress test of the experience, it doesn’t say much about how useful this feature as it stands today would be on a site like mine where the conversations are more technical, where it would reduce the reliance on people selecting and quoting context to clarify the responses.

Ditto. Who knows which thread nested chunk it’s in? I guess that’s a downside of this system.

The way live journal type sites handle it is to give all replies a link to the parent comment, so it’s clear coming from a notification or flat view what’s a top level comment and what’s not. Flat view here looks like it’s handling replies similar to regular topic view right now, but I think especially coming from a notification in nested threads, a parent link or something like how quote posts are handled would be really helpful.

wow, this is awesome! can’t wait for the release of this!!

Interesting… just testing. Definitely in favor of nested as an option in some form!!!

Very cool, it’s exactly the effect I was looking for. Thanks. Can’t wait to use it.

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Is this Pinned feature new as well?

Does clicking reply make it display as nested? Let me try replying.

I generally prefer topic splitting to megathreading, but where megathreads are inevitable this nested view might be useful.

A few things I’d wish for to make it easier to collapse & scan a megathread:

• A one-click collapse all option
• Single posts also collapse
• Collapsed sections to include the first few words of the “lead” post. (Maybe an icon if no text present)

In my opinion, this feature should be developed and added to the Discourse system based on user preferences. Many people like this feature. I’m eagerly awaiting it.

On mobile, the lines connecting the avatar to the link and the expand/collapse nodes have been removed, which looks strange. I can’t figure out the corresponding relationships at all.

did the view as flat button go missing?

It’s behind a group site setting now (hidden). It’s staff-only by default. The idea is end users shouldn’t be thinking in nested vs flat mode.

yes but now i am getting notifications for this topic and i can’t find the latest post it refers to (or more likely i am not doing it properly lol).

also this is super confusing

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It is the nature of non-linear discussion.

There is a reason Discourse went with the flat one first, as Threaded discussion is ultimately too complex to survive on the public Internet? - #2 by codinghorror

We are missing a “Parent post” link indeed.

Hmm… I don’t see a Flat view toggle now?

https://meta.discourse.org/n/testing-nested-replies-on-meta/398759/84

It’s not missing the “Parent post” I don’t think.. when you’re deeplinked to a post it shows the parent as well. I believe the issue is mainly the consolidation of “replied” notifications. They get lumped together as N new replies and only link to the lastest reply, so the N-1 are super hard to find. Really need to think of a solution there. I’d love to not mess with our notification system.

Maybe we could append a query param to notification URLs for nested view and have a “step through” system for watched topics or something. cc @Lilly

But in HN or Reddit, I can keep clicking on “Parent” to go all the way until I can grasp the context of that branch. I’ve used this flow many times when getting a notification on Reddit.

But consolidation doesn’t happen to direct replies right? Only watching and likes right?

i just realized i can’t filter for my posts from my user card in this topic.

just to reiterate - i love that you folks added this as a feature option and i can’t wait to use it on my forum (hoping soon). i have an use case that fits well as a way to test it.

I still don’t understand though, I clicked on the notification for your post, and see all the parent nodes up to the root .

Good question, not sure. probably?

I guess it is only a problem after 10 levels deep, where you won’t get all the context?

We actually have a “view parent context” link for this case. We are about hit it with this conversation hehe. I believe we should be covered here. Not that the UX is perfect by any means, but I think we have this functionality fundamentally.

the UX is working quite well i think. it just takes some getting used to when switching out of flat context topics. the experience is definitely getting better the more i use it and get the hang of navigating the topic. i think in a proper use case scenario, the nested commenting and different visual format will be much easier to follow. fantastic work Team, this is really impressive.

I’m seeing a notification of 7 unread messages in this topic, but no way to find where they are or to visit them. Even sorting by new doesn’t help.

So, the concept of new unreads might need adjusting, or the method of sorting by new.

Yes, totally agree. You’re not at all wrong.

I spent several minutes until I understood I had to scroll and expand multi-nested replies to see the actual new content.
I’m glad the nested topics view feels right for some people and communities. I wouldn’t engage in meaningful discussions on any platform using this layout (in this current state, which has at first glance no major differences with reddit?).

The two places I see this kind of nesting are Reddit and Hacker News - in both cases they allow folding (collapsing, hiding) - and in both cases my way of using them is to wait a decent interval before reading a thread. (If too early, I may miss wisdom.) I never revisit anything. And I never contribute.

I suppose on nested views, you’re not supposed to “read it all” as opposite to a flat view. You’re meant to direct your attention to branches instead.
Is that how it’s supposed to be used?

That’s exactly it, you nailed it.

And then there is the unsolved issue: how does a user know what branch has info/opinions interesting enough

That would be a nightmare’ish for moderation. But as said several times — if the nested thingy will be reality at some point, there is no force to start using it, unless community (meaning quite often what an admin desires ) wants or likes it.

Here’s one reply to your comment to test the nesting.

On Reddit, I tend to consider each top-level comment as “mini topics”. I find one interesting, and then I read as much as I can from it, which is limited by the usability of this interface. Which means I’m probably missing interesting comments because they were too deep, or inside a sub-branch I didn’t expand.

The difference between Reddit and Discourse is that whatever they are called, I rarely consider Reddit replies in higher esteem than mere “comments”. Rarely interesting, rarely more than a single sentence, rarely high-effort or value adding, and, of course, often dispensable (and riddled with trolls and bots).

On Discourse, or at least on meta (even if Discourse emphasizes this by philosophy), replies are much more substantial and deserve to be read.

Which makes the nested view, at least on meta, particularly unfit, if not incompatible.

Yes, you’re absolute right about this. It’s not something we would recommend for the vast majority of communities. I think it’ll only make sense for quite large communities like game forums. I used to watch professional League of Legends and the subreddit would have post-game discussions with thousands of people discussing. That would be a perfect use case, where you can’t read everything. You don’t want to read everything.

How does this notification work, is it good?

What about this notification?

And then it’ll consolidate.

Just testing notifications, don’t mind me

A few tweaks and could be a nice replacement for the Journal Plugin !

testing an unread reply 1

testing an unread reply 2