Have you ever noticed how when you’re in a long thread, and you post a reply to an individual post, Discourse dumps you at the bottom to look at your pretty words and then you have to scroll back up to wherever you were trying to read the rest of the thread? I don’t like that myself, maybe others do.
Click the [quote=“crankypuss, post:15, topic:13523, full:true”]
Have you ever noticed how when you’re in a long thread, and you post a reply to an individual post, Discourse dumps you at the bottom to look at your pretty words and then you have to scroll back up to wherever you were trying to read the rest of the thread? I don’t like that myself, maybe others do.
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Click the small arrow on the top right of your post, to the left of the name of the person you have replied to. Their post will show up right above yours.
Now for some historical mumbo-jumbo (you can skip this part):
When Jeff Atwood first announced he was working on Discourse, I was one of the people that didn’t see a any purpose to it, other than of course as a business strategy. And a discussion (in the good sense) on his blog ensued. He preceded the announcement with a couple of posts on which he argued that the threaded model found on many online discussion systems was bad and he defended a linear model. This was one of his motivations for Discourse.
I personally to this day don’t know what he was talking about. The threaded model was never implemented on web forums software. And the only widely used systems that implement it are, to my knowledge, reddit and the USENET. While I could see the merits in some of his arguments, what I couldn’t understand was why something that has already gone into disuse should deserve so much attention. It felt a bit like saying “Candles are a thing of the past. And I am making this slightly different shaped light bulb to all other light bulbs to end with all candles”.
Now, if he had said, “Hey, I want top make this slightly different shaped light bulb, because I think it will be a cool and useful light bulb!”, I would be totally ok with that.
I was a bit biased however. Must be said. I happen to privilege the threaded discussion model over the… erm, vertical post shopping lists that web forums have always presented. But here you have it why Discourse works the way it does. To Atwood credit he did a great job with the forum software and, just like the arrow that I mentioned above, Discourse is full of little things that makes it a usable and enjoyable forum software. Pretty too.
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Saying “i know a better way” always seems to ■■■■ people off, so i’ll just mind my own bidness since i seem to already have more balls in the air than i can juggle at any particular time… thanks for the clue about the reply-arrow, it’s better than nothing fwiw, and i appreciate it, just as i appreciate that Discourse is a level or two above any other web-forum software i’ve seen to date.
And, btw, i very much appreciate the fact that youse guys have Discourse set up so i can use my normal goddamn vocabulary and Discourse removes any ■■■■■■■ word that is considered by the administrative folks to be inappropriate, i can express myself freely instead of hemming and hawing about some of the ■■■■ out there like maybe iOS which is a turd from the go. imo.
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Your post made me laugh so hard! Thank you for that. 
I had to abide by my duty and split the topic, as it is unrelated to basic installs of Ubuntu MATE and a bit noisy for a topic in the development category. 
I can’t tell if you were being sarcastic, but Ubuntu MATE is a family-friendly distro, so it’s there to keep it clean. 
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