Redstate

By civil truth Posted in Archived — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I'm sure that most if not all of us have gotten tripped up by the RedState "Reply to This" feature and ended up starting a new thread instead of our reply ending up in the right place to continue an ongoing thread.

We then feel really stupid, plus we may get a rejoinder from a moderator (or other commenter) along the lines of "Reply to This" is your Friend (or a more severe rebuke).

Folks, we're not all idiots - there's a reason for our mistake - as well as an easy prophylaxis.

First of all, I would venture to say that almost always this problem arises when we are trying to reply to the last comment of the post. Why is this? Well when we're replying to a post in the middle, we are essentially forced to use "Reply to This" because the preexisting "Reply" box is below the last comment, and thus is out of sight.

However, when we're at the end of the last comment, the regular reply box is right there in front of us. Worse, unless the comment is very short, we see only the last comment in front of us -- which is almost exactly the same view we have after we click on "Reply to This".

In other words, we have to remember to use "Reply to This" because the screen won't really give much of a clue.

What then is the prophylaxis I spoke of? Actually, there are two levels of protection available to keep us out of trouble, but we have to remember to use them before we send our message, which can be a problem when we're in the midst of a torrid interchange.

1) At the first level, when we get ready to type, first look above our name and check the heading.

**If we are typing a reply, the heading will say Reply

**If we are typing a new comment/starting a new thread, the heading will say Post new comment.

2) The second level of protection is to use the "Preview" feature. This is a very good idea anyway because it enables us to pick-up typos, grammar mistakes, and formatting errors. But another reason to use "Preview" is that we then get a three part screen image: (a) the preview image of our comment (c) the Subject and Comment boxes containing our typed text, and [importantly] (c) the entity to which we are replying.

It is this (c) that is the our protection.

**If we are indeed responding to a comment, we will see only that comment in the area below the typing boxes. Then we can be assured that we have used the "Reply to This" and are in the correct thread.

**However, if we are starting a new thread, then we will see the beginning of the blog in this area below the typing boxes.

If were in the wrong location, then we need to start over again with "Reply to This" (after doing cut and paste to save what we've already written).

In brief, the keys are first, to check the heading before we start typing; and second, get in the habit of always using "Preview" and checking below the typing area to confirm what we are replying to.

Hope this both explains the frequency of erroneous threading errors as well as offering easy protection.