New users go to Discourse forums all the time. As long as there’s a way to read and reply, the rest is pretty small potatoes. New people wouldn’t likely be as affected because they’re learning a new place. It’s mostly the users from the old platform who are expecting things to go one way that they’re used to that are not getting what they expected. Even they will figure it out over time.
That’s true of all communication, regardless of the platform.
Discourse has made it much easier to know when people are trying to talk to you or about you because they notify you when you’re linked, when you’re quoted, when you’re mentioned. It’s a huge improvement over systems that don’t do that. In this one small instance where someone might, just might be replying to you without you getting notified isn’t such a huge issue to me. If it is to you, that’s what this thread is for. Welcome to the Discourse Hobbyist Bar Club!
Yes, taking out the quote of the person directly above them was intentionally added. It was seen as a feature.
And yes, that feature is easily removed with a toggle in the SDMB admin panel.
I just meant that the SDMB is not likely to add any plug-ins to the SDMB Discourse. They have never added any plug-ins to the SDMB vBulletin. There’s no reason to think they would more amenable to do so now.