Don’t use the reply button and just directly use the comment box at the bottom of the page. You can think it as not directly replying but as commenting in a thread because technically OP does not post but creates a thread, does that make sense?

Scroll to the bottom of the thread. Comment box is there

It is a little wonky… To respond to OP you have to scroll to the bottom of all the comments.

For some reason, the box to reply to OP is at the bottom of a thread.

Not sure why it wouldn’t be at the top, but it is how it is.

I might look into whether I can fix this using a custom theme 🤔