I've been using that for quite a while now to reply to stuff that wasn't loading but I saw replies to on my stream
(not to suggest you "should have known", just surprised Masto has been usable for others without knowing it at this point -- I guess I've been further behind than I realized O_o )
@sydneyfalk Judging from the number of boosts of that post in my Notifications stream, I wasn't the only one who didn't know up to now.
I have to admit I didn't really read much of the user documentation yet, so I should probably check if that function is mentioned somewhere...