Why can't I "Add New Topic" while reading a discussion?

TuDiabetes Website
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Continuing the discussion from Do Diabetes Pharma Companies Have a Monopoly?:

When you are viewing a discussion, the capabilities which Discourse makes available are the ones which are relevant to participating in a discussion.

You can, of course, contribute directly to the discussion by using a reply button, . If your reply is connected to the discussion but not really pertinent to it, then you can create a new discussion topic which is linked to the current discussion … .

If you want to add a new discussion topic which is not related to the content in the current discussion in any way, then you do so by leaving the discussion and instead viewing one of the lists of discussion topics. The “Add New Topic” button … … is at the top right of any list of discussion topics as shown in the screenshot below.
    

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I’m aware of creating new threads by clicking “New Topic”. The question I asked yesterday was because it seemed that there was yet another feature, “Reply as new topic”. Creating a new thread is not a “reply” so why did they write," Reply as new topic"??

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I think what started this off is that @MarieB meant to say “Reply as Linked Topic” in the post over here.

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that’s funny. I really copied that from the Discourse Meta site, I’m sorry to add to the confusion :confused:

Should I go back and change “new” to “linked”? I don’t think most people notice the orange pencils, which means a post was edited.

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I wouldn’t worry about it. I have struggled with how to get good information from Meta Discourse. It seems that a lot of features and names have changed in just the two short years. Who knows, maybe in 2014 it actually was called “Reply as new topic” but it isn’t now.

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I just joined over there this morning. let’s just say 99% of it is either over my head or code. I was hoping to find some more basic info, like what do you call the notification thingie? Is it the notification area, the notification bubble, or the notification button.

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In my opinion both “Reply as Linked Topic” and “Reply as New Topic” are essentially correct. The OCD side of my brain would actually prefer
    "Reply by Linking to New Topic Rather Than Continuing to Hijack Current Discussion"
But that’s a bit much, I suppose. :dizzy_face:

I disagree. Sometimes a new thread of discussion is a reply. And that is what “Reply as Linked (New) Topic” is about.

Your question posted to the “Do Diabetes Pharma Companies Have a Monopoly?” discussion topic didn’t seem to fit with discussing pharma monopolies. Rather than replying in that thread and continuing to “clutter” it up, I replied by creating a new thread in a hopefully more appropriate category using the button.

I consider the key thing here to be that your original question post and this new thread are linked. This makes it more likely that anyone who comes across this topic in the future and wonders "What the ■■■■ is going on here?" will be able to sort it out. They’ll have access to the history of the discussion and be able to better see how it developed.

The simple fact is that Thread Hijacking does happen. The solutions I have seen in other venues were either (1) just accept it and try to ignore it or (2) try to hammer out an ad hoc kludgy solution by creating another thread and then trying to get everyone to move the hijack to the new, more appropriate discussion topic.

The button is just an attempt to create a more formal and consistent tool to accomplish what people sometimes try to do on their own.

Does it work as well as one might wish? Probably not. :disappointed:

Is it better than leaving people to fend for themselves? I would expect opinions to vary, but I think it’s at least an improvement. :partly_sunny:

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Any of those are probably good enough. I am not sure it really has a name, just a function. I think I tend to refer to it as the notification list … because it’s really just a peek at the 10 entries currently at the top of the full list which is found on your profile page.

The option to view older notifications at the bottom of the list transfers you to the full list on your profile page.

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I actually asked @neillll and he said the Discourse wizards don’t have an official name for it, but he calls it the notification dropdown, so that’s what I’m going to call it.

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I think that reference evokes my “scrunchy face” because I feel the reference to a dropdown list/menu is even less likely to resonate with folks who are lost than “notification list”. But of course I don’t really have anything to base that on.

The reason I keep inserting this screencap image of the button’s icon is because I think it is immediately clearer than any attempt to describe it in words. (Except for those who don’t see it, of course. Apologies to @Jen and others also using screen readers. I keep trying to think of a better approach but so far I’ve got nothin’.)

If you want to use the notification icon image in your own posts, just copy 'n paste the HTML markup below.
<img src="//cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tudiabetes/original/3X/f/a/fae5c79026e99e10d9dedc19866657bf595ed1ca.png" width="28" height="28">

Do you think it could helpful to post a list of the markup tags for this icon and others like it which the admin team & others could include in a post when trying to explain something? cc: @Emily_Coles @Brian_BSC

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You missed the gist of my point which was that someone said there were TWO different features; one being “reply as new topic” and the other being “Reply as linked Topic”. They misspoke, ergo the point about “reply as new topic” is MOOT.

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Yes, I did. :disappointed:

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