Or we could make "convert to comment" accept the post URL too (have the code extract the post ID instead of having the human do it).

Will the moderator always want to attach the comment to either the question or one of its other answers? If there is never a need to choose any other post, could the dialog list the question and its answers rather than taking an id? This could be in the form of a list of posts, each showing the author and a few lines from the start of the post (since some authors may post 2 answers, or a question and an answer).

Would this be helpful for moderators?

Monica Cellio‭, that would also work. I considered suggesting it, but it seemed to have more potential for unintended consequences: although I don't know the Codidact code, my experience with other web frameworks suggests that it would mean changing from a built-in field validator to a custom one which would require maintenance.

trichoplax‭, it seems likely that that would be the case, but I don't know that we have enough experience accumulated yet to rule out weirder use cases.

Good point about unexpected use cases. When development time is available, I wonder if we could have multiple choice (the question and its answers) followed by the current post id approach as a fallback.

• Question
• Answer 1
• Answer 2
• Other - please enter post id

I don't think we ever intended that you could turn a post into a comment on a completely different top-level post. Good point about needing extra validation if we accept the URL. The selector trichoplax‭ suggested sounds like a great usability improvement. I don't know how hard it is.

@Peter, in the meantime, you can do the cut/paste to extract the post ID from the "copy link" side instead of the tools side. I'm sorry for the extra hassle.