Hi, Shea --
You did a great job adding your links to the Sept 30th thread. The step-by-step directions are usually in reply #2 of each week's thread. I'm glad you figured it out.
As far as seeing whether someone has specifically answered your post, I don't know an easy way. It's complicated. You can subscribe to a thread, of course, which includes all the replies. There's an option to use a "Threaded" thread display mode, but then it depends on whether or not the person actually quotes you in the reply. Another issue for the Threaded mode is that it changes the post numbers and they will no longer match the gallery notices from the notification team. Our team's post numbers correspond to the default thread display mode, which is "Linear - Oldest First."
When you're lucky, someone might answer your post within a dozen replies, and in that case you won't have to hunt too far to find it.