I got this error while trying to post this the first time. After clicking the button again it gave the same error and asked whether I wanted to reply to https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/how-to-tag-a-railway-track-side-equipment-box-cabinet/103245/3 or https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/seattle-healthy-street-classification/103253 (which I had recently voted up, but was otherwise unrelated).
To successfully reply I had to copy the text, discard the reply, reply again and paste the text.
Weird. Were you navigating that second post while the compose window to reply to the first one was open?
Iâm trying to think how to replicate the issue again in case we need to report it.
Thanks
No. I voted the first post up first, then went to the second link (either via an email link, via the âsomeone has replied to somethingâ link at top right, or via the list at the bottom of the screen), read that, quoted part of it and replied. The quote is clearly of text in that second thread.
Itâs not even clear what âYou are not allowed to create a post in reply to another postâ actually means.
Sounds almost like
Post
âŠPost reply
⊠âŠPost reply (no sir you cant)
Iâve seen this as well. The behaviour seems somewhat inconsistent, when I tried to replicate it a couple of days ago it allowed a reply,
Just had the same thing occur attempting to reply to a thread:
Same thing happened both when I quoted that line, & also just hitting the reply button?
Edit: But trying again by highlighting that line, then pressing reply (which is what I did previously) worked the next time! 
Just had it happen again, after I had quoted a line to reply to. Deleted the quote & just replied & it worked, so that may be the issue?
Were all those issues in Help and support and Tagging help & support (i.e. potentially related to the new Q&A plugin) or do they occur in normal threads as well?
Testing quote
Which worked so itâs OK here!
Sorry, I couldnât say whether they were or not? Iâll have to see next time it happens
Iâve seen it a few times (includng yesterday), always in areas with comments enabled. See also this.
Had this with this post. Deleted the quote, posted, then reinstated the quote in an edit.
Same here on that exact post too.
Edit: I think perhaps weâre supposed to âcommentâ on the reply we want to respond to, rather than creating our own new response?
Apparently this is exactly what happens. If you add a general reply to the topic using the blue âReplyâ button at the end everything is fine. You can then even quote as many passages out of other posts as you like.
If you reply directly to the post of another user using the reply button under the post you will get the error messages because Discourse expects you to use the comment function instead.
I had the same error message and when I tried the different options this was the result.
Just had a similar sort of an issue here: Irrelevant locality names - #3 by SimonPoole
Teknoboy added a comment to ask a question.
When I then added a comment to reply to them, it told me that Comments are limited to 600 characters, which isnât a lot.
I then added a reply Irrelevant locality names - #7 by Fizzie41 but there was no way of actually quoting his comment?
Comments seem to be in general somewhat a 2nd class citizen in Discourse. In any case it would be nice if there was a way to convert comments to regular replies and the other way around.
Oh yes, and this is going to get some knickers in a knot: there doesnât seem to be a mechanism to report (or moderate in general) comments.
⊠or even just select text and just click âquoteâ, actually, or as @dieterdreist found, reply by email.
Correct, by doing so a direct reply to the post is startet, attracting the error message. Havnât tried the email thing but Iâm sure @dieterdreist is correct.
Looks like the only thing you can do is to copy text out of a comment and paste it into the reply window. If you want it to look good, you can even add the quote manually ⊠like in the good old days ⊠
), for instance
The plugin being used for Q&A is a great candidate for exploring if its development can be âsponsoredâ by OSMF and prioritize solving some of the issues commented on this topic.
I have it too, see here and follow-up reply and itâs comment.
I think it is some unlucky configuration here on community.openstreetmap.org (âunluckyâ because the error message is confusing, only appears after having written the answer, and does not say what to do instead).
If it really is not wanted to post answers on answers, then I think it is important to make the user experience better: Tell straight away that it does not work and what do do instead.
Comments are also not a good solution since apparently they do not support every formatting (see âbrokenâ quote in the comment to this post) and they allow only up to 600 characters, making it difficult to express more complex stuff. Another suggestion is to allow comments to be as complex as posts.
a workaround is muting the Help section, this way you are not tempted to reply
