man, email threading is a mess... https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html

@trwnh i really love e-mail being a directed graph.

it's better than linear old irc

it's better than slack/discord/element

it's decentralized and robust similar to mastodon but still mastodon is somehow worse and less stable than good old E-Mail.
I love nerds who use E-Mail the proper way

@saxnot i don't see why it has to be either/or -- it depends on which direction you're approaching it from

either you ask an authority for "every post in the thread (flat list or set)", and then you can say sort that set by time if not already sorted... and replies are just metadata within that thread (a la slack/discord/element)

or you try to construct the graph of replies independently of anyone's authority, with each resource being self-sufficient

sometimes you care about authority!