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> For some reason I can’t reply to ‘chrisper’

HN doesn't let you do this to new comments to avoid back-and-forth commenting that is typical in flamewars.

Coming up on 9 years here and I'm still finding out new things about how this site works. I've been wondering recently why some comments aren't replyable.

I think there is a time delay. Wait a few minutes or hours and you can reply. That cooling off period has helped me really think through my replies.

They become replyable after some amount of time. The amount of time varies based on how active the thread is and/or how deeply nested the comment is.

You can reply anyway, but you have to click on the timestamp ("X minutes ago") to do it.

Usually you can click on the <posting time> and go to a page that displays only that comment, which has a reply box even when there's no reply option on the main page.

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