[David Lewis]

@3sixty: Yes… it already exists… but it’s confusing, unintuitive and inconsistent. Users don’t understand the difference between updates and forum postings in the activity stream. They don’t understand the difference between replying in the activity stream and replying in the thread. Any why should they? Reply means reply. Period. The way it works now is just plain broken. You end up with people replying to thread in the stream then wondering what the heck happened when they visit the thread later and don’t see their contribution. So the only alternative is to turn off activity stream replies for forum postings. But that’s even worse. Now you have bits of conversation in the stream that you CAN reply to (updates) and bits of conversation in the stream that you CANNOT reply to. Well you can… but you have to know enough to click “view” to take you to some other place and reply there. Very inconsistent. Too much friction. And not at all intuitive. I think that in the case of forum postings, replies made within the activity stream go to the THREAD… NOT to a permalink comment page. Think like a user. Like a human. Not like a programmer.

If there a ticket for this serious usability issue? There should be.