I expect preview to show posts from the end of thread. Replying usually is done for last post in the thread.

The current behavior has to do with what hitting "Reply" at the bottom of the page means -- we somewhat arbitrarily decided it meant replying to the OP regardless of what page of the thread you're on. So the context for the OP is indeed the first five posts in the thread.

However, maybe this is not the most useful behavior. I think we do want to keep things sorted such that replies that are not to any specific post are to the OP (since they usually are for short threads), but perhaps we should add a url parameter to the reply button so that hitting reply at the bottom of a page shows the last few posts on that page?

mmozeiko
I expect preview to show posts from the end of thread. Replying usually is done for last post in the thread.

ChronalDragon
The current behavior has to do with what hitting "Reply" at the bottom of the page means -- we somewhat arbitrarily decided it meant replying to the OP regardless of what page of the thread you're on. So the context for the OP is indeed the first five posts in the thread.

However, maybe this is not the most useful behavior. I think we do want to keep things sorted such that replies that are not to any specific post are to the OP (since they usually are for short threads), but perhaps we should add a url parameter to the reply button so that hitting reply at the bottom of a page shows the last few posts on that page?

Unless I misremember how I coded it, the (up to) 5 context posts shown depend on which post you reply to. So if you reply to the thread, you get shown the OP. If you reply to the last post in the thread, you get shown the last 5 posts.

We could just make the reply button at the bottom of the page mean you're replying to the last post on that page, showing the relevant context. Thoughts welcome on what context to grab in which case.

I would say the reply at the bottom should show the _last_ 5 posts of the thread in reverse order (so the oldest is at the top). That makes the most sense to me

Hjortshoej
I would say the reply at the bottom should show the _last_ 5 posts of the thread in reverse order (so the oldest is at the top). That makes the most sense to me

Sure, but if there's more than 1 page, it would also make sense to show the last 5 posts on the 2nd page if you hit Reply to Thread on the 2nd page. I suppose I could make that into a setting, but if you want the expected "show 5 posts before last post" already, you can just hit reply on the last post.

I'll update what the "Reply to Thread" links to next week after there's a bit more feedback on what it should link to.