What ''is'' the Reply tool? It's not actually said on this page. 74.118.116.59 01:57, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/Flow
(Or, anyway, if it is, it's not at the top. Came here from a report about the A/B testing on en-wiki that similarly failed to define terms.)
It's an extra button that appears at the end of a post on a talk page. When you click on it, it opens a reply form that makes replying to that post easier to do correctly. It indents correctly, helps ping correctly, and automatically signs correctly for you, among other things.
Probably he easiest way to try it is visiting any talk page on the Arabic, Czech or Hungarian Wikipedia—these are the three wikis where the tool is enabled by default for everyone. For example my talk page on the Hungarian Wikipedia, with English interface: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szerkesztővita:Tacsipacsi?uselang=en. Notice the [reply] links after the timestamps. (Feel free to click on the link and play with it, although I’d be happy if you didn’t actually send me new messages.)
I'm with the IP here. The page desperately needs to say what the reply tool actually is, e.g. Valeree's explanation, placed in or near the lead. You have to scan through 40 kB to get some clues in Talk pages project/Replying#Deployment decisions, the only place on the page where reply links are mentioned. There are some earlier images which include weak grey "Reply", mostly on a discussion from 2013! Why use an 8 years old discussion as illustration of a new tool? Readers may think the images are from 2013. This talk page also has "Reply" links and it's unclear whether I'm using the reply tool right now. I'm probably not but without seeing Valeree's description, it would have looked like I am.
I've added that in. Everyone should of course feel free to edit and/or place in a better spot. :D
This page is using Flow. If you'd like to try the new Reply tool, click on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Talk_pages_project/Replying/Prototype_testing?dtenable=1 I've just made a "sandbox" section.