Can you reply to comments?

  • sonjalind · Member ·

    I have tried to reply to comments, but can’t seem to do this. Does this even exist in WP? (Even an identation of the reply comment would help – as well as an alert to the person being replied to)

    If this doesn’t exist in WP, will it exist in the future?

  • timethief · Member ·

    I reply to comments all the time so I’m confused about why you can’t. Could you give some more details about exactly what’s going on at your end please?

  • forestneeds · Member ·

    If someone can make a comment, so can you. You can either comment on your own blog as an after-thought, or comment in reply to someone else’s comment. Just do this in the comments box.
    Alternatively, if you have set the options so that commentor (other than youself) is required to provide an email address, then you have the option of communicating with the commentor via email.

  • eclecticgeek · Member ·

    Just a thought but perhaps your comments are being labeled as spam. This has happened to me a couple of times. WP.com has a very good spam filter (Akismet). Check your spam folder just to be sure.

    Dashboard -> Manage -> Akismet Spam

  • timethief · Member ·

    It just ocuured to me that sometimes the most simple things slip by us and perhaps this is one of those cases. The way you reply to comments made on your blog is to use a comment box in the same way that your readers do. I hope that helps.

  • drmike · Member ·

    I believe the original poster is talking about making a comment show as a reply to a specific comment. You will note that (I’m assuming that she is a she) she mentions identation. This is done over at weblogtoolscollection.com but I can’t find an example right off to show.

    To the best of my knowledge, I’m going to say no although I have seen specific WordPress (please note the missing .com on there) blogs that do it. There’s probably a wordpress plugin or something that would allow this but that’s outside of what we can do here at wp.com.

    Best bet would be to submit a feedback and suggest this feature. I usually mention adding in a link to the forum thread where we’ve discussed it show that staff and see the opinion on the topic.

    Good luck,
    -drmike

  • eclecticgeek · Member ·

    Thanks for the clarification drmike. That actually would be a handy feature. I’ve sent a feedback as well.

  • drmike · Member ·

    Most folks do a:

    @eclecticgeek

    when they want to reply directly to a specific comment. I usually send an email as well to the commenter since I get my comments into my inbox.

  • eclecticgeek · Member ·

    @drmike:
    I’m mostly thinking about this feature for one particular post on my blog. Trying not to put everyone to sleep with the details but…

    The post is about symptoms but has become the “catch-all” post with all kinds of questions (treatment, diet, volume calculations, recovery, etc.). Now that I have posts to answer stuff, it would be cool to be able to go back and reply to those old comments with info and links so all visitors could see it. As it stands, I’ll probably have to edit the comments with a labeled bracketed section to add answers.

    After visiting the site, I understand why this feature would be so important to sonjalind. What is the best way to handle answering multiple comments on WP.com blogs? All answers are welcome. :)

  • miravisu · Member ·

    Yes, “threaded comments” is a very nice feature in a blog…

    One can actually click to reply to a specific comment, and the comment is then threaded, usually slightly “inwards, a little to the right side to mark the um threading. This is a feature many other blogs have, and I for one very much miss it in WP, as it makes following commentary discussions and replying to particular comments a lot smoother. One doesn’t have to read through all past comments, to see what comment above is the one referred/replied to, as when a comment is threaded it is directly hooked onto the replied to comment, just below it, instead of being chronologically added further down on the bottom of the comments listing.

    I was told of a WP plugin when explaining my dilemma to others, namely “Brian’s Threaded Comments” by Brian Meidell. But as already said, it doesn’t appear it is a plugin one can implement in a basic account here on wordpress dot com. One’d have to have a WP account run on an own server/webhost to be able to fiddle with it properly to get this to work, right? :(

    So I too am hoping this will be a feature that’ll be implemented in future versions of WP.

  • anomoly · Member ·

    this seems like a very basic feature… i hope they change this soon

  • cjwriter · Member ·

    @anomoly: Your best bet would be to send an email to staff when support opens just to let them know that people are still interested in it. They’re supposed to keep track of all suggestions and an extra voice doesn’t hurt. As it’s been awhile though, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. :)
    http://wordpress.com/contact-support/
    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=17480&page&replies=9#post-131034

  • timethief · Member ·

    @anomoly
    Above is a duplicate from yourself -> https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=1842
    Please take note that pulling every existing thread on a topic and adding your request bit to it only creates more work for volunteers responding to these posts. Volunteers DO NOT make these decisions, staff do.

    cjwriter has been typing duplicxated answers to you and raincoaster has told you what we do have. If you want to request an additional feature then you can ask staff by using the “support” button on the top right hand corner of and admin side blog page. Support hours are weekdays 8-4PM, Pacific time.

    Best wishes for a happy outcome. :-)

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Actually, there’s one more consideration which nobody has mentioned. Technorati recently changed something (or maybe WordPress did, I’m not sure) but now every time we, the blog owners, make a comment on the blog, Technorati counts it as a new post. If other search engines do the same, that means that the more you comment on your own blog the higher you’ll rank in searches, because you get promoted in part based on how often you post. If every comment is a post, then Poof! All of a sudden you can be “posting” twenty times a day as far as the search engines are concerned.

    So my advice is to make an individual comment as a reply to each specific comment you want to reply to. Say there are four comments on your post, and two of them need answers: do two separate comments.

  • thesacredpath · Member ·

    Sounds like Technorati (and possibly others) gamed themselves.

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Yep. But I see no reason not to use that to our own advantage until they fix it.

  • thesacredpath · Member ·

    I’m with you. If you will excuse me, I have about 75 comments to reply to.

  • The topic ‘Can you reply to comments?’ is closed to new replies.