Uh, Twitter doesn't *need* to read users' minds, it just needs to merge the two approaches together. Before, Twitter auto-linked everything, and manual replies were considered genuine replies even if they weren't. Now, it auto-links nothing, and manual replies aren't auto-linked even if they *are* genuine replies.
So Twitter can auto-link manual replies that aren't specifically marked as such (e.g.: by clicking the reply swoosh in the web interface), and store that data *separately* from genuine replies that are specifically marked as replies. That is, the "in_reply_to" data can have a flag letting the client know if the data was auto-linked or if it was not. Then, clients can decide what to do with that extra data. For example, there could be a setting in the Twitter web interface to show "in reply to" links for manual replies *and* genuine replies, or to show "in reply to" links only for genuine replies. That way it can satisfy me (and the other users that feel the same way), as well as those that only want the most accurate links between conversations. I (and some of my followers) think that more context is better than no context at all, even if the context is only approximate. Others think that only accurate context is valuable, and approximate context isn't at all. Such a change would preserve *more* metadata and would allow *both* kinds of users to use Twitter how they want to. -- Simone On 3 Mar, 16:24, atebits <loren.brich...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Requiring a user to go through a specific part of the > > UI just to reply to a tweet is not acceptable. > > How else would you expect it to work? Twitter can't read users' minds.
