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mdfahd
Gainsight Employee ⭐️⭐️
Jul 29, 2026 12:45 PM UTC

Moderate Threaded Replies in Customer Communities

  • Aug 25, 2026 9:10 AM UTC
  • 55 replies
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This article helps admins to enable and moderate threaded replies in Gainsight Customer Communities.

Overview

 

Threaded replies help community users to respond to a specific reply within a post. This creates structured levels of reply, keeping the conversations direct and consolidated. As an admin, you can enable threaded replies from Control.

The Destination view shows the community-facing thread as members see it. The Control view provides the full set of moderation tools and mirrors the destination layout, making it easier to cross-reference content while taking action.

Limitations:

 

  • Thread depth is capped at three levels (L1, L2, L3). Replying to an L3 reply posts the response as an L2 reply with an automatic @mention.
  • Trashing or marking a reply as spam applies only to that individual reply. Child replies (L2 and L3) are not removed automatically.
  • The sort order for L2 and L3 replies is fixed at oldest first and cannot be changed.
  • Turning off the Enable Threaded Replies toggle hides all nested replies from view. They are not deleted and become visible again when the toggle is turned back on.

 

Enable Threaded Replies From Control

 

For communities who require a clean structure and consolidated view of replies, threaded replies can be enabled from the Control.

To enable threaded replies:

  1. Log into Control.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Content and Replies. The Content and Replies page appears.
     
  3. Turn on the Enable threaded replies toggle. Threaded Replies is now active in Destination and Control.

IMPORTANT: When the threaded replies toggle is turned off, the nested replies are hidden in Destination. Replies are not deleted. Turning the toggle back on restores their visibility.

 

Moderate Replies in Control 

 

The Control provides the full set of moderation tools for topic replies. The layout mirrors the destination view, so content you identify in the destination is easy to locate in Control.

 

You can access any topic or a conversation from Control:

 

  1. Log in to Control.
  2. Navigate to Content > Overview. The Overview page appears.
  3. In the Search text field, enter the topic name to moderate. The Topic Moderation page appears.

The Topic Moderation page has the following sections:

 

  1. Original Topic Post: Displays the topic as posted by the community member, including the title, body text, and engagement options such as Like, Reply, and Share.
  2. Overview: Lists key metadata about the topic, including its type, creation date, section, category, view count, likes, and reply count.
  3. Details: Shows the editable properties of the topic, including the title, category, public tags, moderator tags, and labels.
  4. Write a reply: Provides a text field for the admin or community member to compose and submit a reply directly below the post.
  5. Pagination: Allows navigation across reply pages. Admins can jump to a specific page, move forward or backward, and control the number of rows displayed per page.
  6. Replies section: Lists all replies associated with the topic in the selected sort order. Nested replies appear indented under their parent reply, reflecting the thread structure.

Moderate a Reply

 

You can manage replies from the control in the Moderate Topic page. To moderate a reply:

  1. Click on the three-vertical dots menu.
     
  2. The following options are available for moderating a reply:
    • Edit: Click the pencil icon to edit a reply.
    • Highlight: Click the arrow icon to highlight a reply.
    • Pin: Click the Pin icon to pin a reply at the top of the list of replies.
    • Link: Click the Link icon to copy the link of the reply to share.

In addition to the above actions, you can also do the following:

  • Promote a reply to a new topic
  • Send a message to the author of the reply
  • Send a moderation notice
  • Mark a reply as spam
  • Move a reply to a topic

Note: When a reply is promoted to a new topic, the child replies are preserved in the new topic.

 

Moderate Replies in Destination

 

You can also moderate the replies in Destination. To do this:

  1. Log into Destination.
  2. Click the three-vertical dots menu.
     
  3. The following options are available for moderating a reply:
    • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Edit: Opens the reply in edit mode.
    • Mark as highlight: Highlights the reply in the thread.
    • Copy link: Copies the reply URL to the clipboard.
    • Quote: Inserts the reply as a quoted block in the reply editor.
    • Report: Flags the reply for a community guideline violation.
    • Mark as spam: Marks the reply as spam for review.
    • Trash: Moves the reply to Trash.

 

    55 replies

    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    Aug 7, 2026 2:31 PM UTC

    Every time we get a reply on a post, it comes through control as “unread by team”. If someone replies to a thread, will that come through as “unread by team” or not? 

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    Sudhanshu
    Gainsight Product Manager
    Aug 7, 2026 3:29 PM UTC

    Hi ​@KathrynMCarter! Thanks for reporting this. Its a known bug we're already fixing. Replies at L2 and L3 are not currently triggering the "unread by team" indicators in Control and the blue border on unread replies in the topic moderation page. We have it logged and it's being worked on. Will update once it's out.

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    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    Aug 17, 2026 1:47 PM UTC

    Just wanted to follow up here - do we have any timeline for this to be released? ​@Sudhanshu 

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    BradleyOVO
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    Aug 21, 2026 9:53 AM UTC

    Hey ​@Sudhanshu 

    We have noticed another confusing change with threaded replies when it comes to our merging moderation practices. 

    Over a 2 week period, we review recently posted and engaged topics/threads and ‘tidy’ them up - whether that is making it its own stand alone conversation/question with a Best Answer thread for other users to find - or, we merge to an existing similar topic to keep things clean and tidy (Navigationally easier for users to find similar related content).

    HIstorically, when merging an OP or comment thread to an existing topic the date and time of the post/comment doesnt change. 

    Now, we find that when we merge, it’s showing as a new/hours old comment which is causing confusion for the team and super users to navigate - as it can seemingly imply that there has been new engagement to an existing thread when actually its an old merged thread. The issue is if you’re unaware its been merged, you’ll access what looks like new engagement on a thread and then feel like you’re lost as nothing is actually new/hours old on the thread. 

    Is this a known issue or something we can update to help avoid confusion?

    Hope that makes sense,

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    I'm not lazy, I'm just in energy saving mode!
    BradleyOVO
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    Aug 21, 2026 1:09 PM UTC

    ​@mdfahd 

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    I'm not lazy, I'm just in energy saving mode!
    JeppePeppe
    Helper ⭐️⭐️
    Aug 24, 2026 7:50 AM UTC

    Is it possible to move a standalone comment into a threaded reply conversations? A user accidentally commented on the topic, and not to a specific reply - and i cant find a way to change the comment into a reply to one of the specific comments. 😅

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    tah-dah
    BradleyOVO
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    Aug 24, 2026 9:43 AM UTC

    Hey ​@JeppePeppe I roughly asked the same question earlier in this thread. 

    This was the response I had: 

     

    Long story short, not something they can currently implement but if we think its a big enough issue we can raise it as an idea on the Gainsight Community.

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    I'm not lazy, I'm just in energy saving mode!
    JeppePeppe
    Helper ⭐️⭐️
    Aug 24, 2026 11:28 AM UTC

    Thanks! I think it’s a big enough issue for sure. If it happens a lot, the purpose of threaded replies is kinda defeated.

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    tah-dah
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️
    Sep 28, 2026 8:25 AM UTC

    Hi, maybe related to some of the feedback already provided in this thread, but a comment we got from one of our community members after enabling threaded replies is that it’s not easy to find new posts in a thread now:

     

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    LisaN
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    Oct 2, 2026 1:48 PM UTC

    I’ve noticed this myself - sometimes it can be multiple clicks to get to the newest content 

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    emiller
    Helper ⭐️
    Oct 20, 2026 9:07 PM UTC

    I have previewed threaded replies in our staging environment and I must say that I do not love the changes to the layout of the moderation screen.  Providing this functionality to our members will come with a cost in the form of reduced moderation workflow efficiency.  In particular, the changes to the internal notes area are problematic for us.  Notes were “demoted” in importance and moved way down on the bottom left.  The text area was also reduced significantly in size, making it more difficult to work with longer notes.  We are heavy users of internal notes and for some big discussions/escalations that require internal research, tracking, and sometimes updates between team members when we route the discussion between multiple moderators, this introduces some difficulties for us.  I realize that you can collapse the other sections, but having to do that every time I open a discussion in control will add a lot of extra clicks.  Here are some suggestions:

    • If we had the ability to change the order and/or placement of the moderation sections, this could help. For me, I would want to place the notes right above the discussion thread, allowing the text area to use the full width of the second column.
    • Consider changing the labels area to a single select dropdown (one line) rather than displaying them all as buttons (more labels = more space consumed).
    • The overview section (which is read only) could be displayed as a single line across the top (full width) so that doesn’t take up space and require scrolling to get to the sections where interaction is done (managing tags, labels, change category, enter internal notes)

     

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    emiller
    Helper ⭐️
    Oct 20, 2026 9:26 PM UTC

    Another thing that is a bit jarring is that anyone who creates content (product updates, articles) will need to get used to working with two separate interfaces depending on whether they are creating or editing the content.  The elements on the screen swap positions when editing vs. creating, whereas without threaded replies enabled, the UI looks the same whether you are creating or editing.

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