id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	focuses
65570	Allow changing a comment's parent from the Edit Comment screen	youknowriad		"There is currently no way to re-parent a comment (change comment_parent) through the admin UI. The only options are editing the database directly or calling the API programmatically.

On the Edit Comment screen (wp-admin/edit-form-comment.php), the parent relationship is shown as read-only text (""In reply to: …"") with no way to change it. edit_comment() in wp-admin/includes/comment.php doesn't process comment_parent from the submitted form.

The data layer already fully supports this:

wp_update_comment() lists comment_parent among its updatable fields (wp-includes/comment.php).
The REST API accepts parent on a comment update, with no readonly flag (class-wp-rest-comments-controller.php).
So this is purely a missing UI control, not a data-model change.

**Potential approach:**

Add an ""In reply to"" control on the Edit Comment screen that lets the user set or clear the parent comment — a picker (or comment-ID field) scoped to other comments on the same post. An empty value means top-level.
Have edit_comment() read comment_parent from $_POST and pass it through to wp_update_comment().
Validate that the chosen parent belongs to the same post and is not the comment itself or one of its descendants, to avoid threading loops.

**Notes:**

 - Guard against cycles (parent can't be a descendant).
 - Consider thread_comments_depth implications for how the re-parented thread displays on the front end."	feature request	new	normal	Awaiting Review	Comments		normal		has-patch has-unit-tests