If you find yourself considering a reply to a topic, but your reply might take the topic in a new direction, perhaps significantly different than the original poster intended, consider instead replying with a new linked topic.
Instead of clicking reply, click the 
icon and then click +New Topic
That gives you some space to have a different, but related, conversation without the appearance of attempting to hijack the thread. This also saves admins or mods from having to split the thread later.
The discoverabilty of this feature is practically nonexistent, and different from how it used to work, so I thought it might be worth presenting.
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Is there anything we can do with the Discourse settings to make it easier to find?
The fact that this feature has always been shoved to the side, despite the fact that splitting conversations is integral to Discourse’s design philosophy, has bothered me from the very beginning of the BBS.
5 Likes
It looks like there’s a proposal to make it and other options available on the icon to the left of the avatar on a reply, but I still don’t find that very discoverable. @codinghorror’s core belief seems to be that it is a power user feature, and therefore should be hidden by default. It could probably be exposed via a plugin, as I’ve seen others that add buttons to toolbars and the like.
I’ll admit that the workflow makes sense, but only after I know how it currently works. I spent some time before I was able to figure out how to do it last night, though.
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I can see why this might be a more “pro user” feature, since it’s potential for misuse could be high.
5 Likes