[sanderjd]

Agreed. It's a trade-off – threading leads to repetition and/or references to already-mentioned ideas. The more truly linear a conversation is, the better Github's style is, and the more a discussion splits into multiple independent conversations, the better the threading style is. Unfortunately, you can't know a priori which kind of discussion it will be, and most discussions are a hybrid.

Personally, I find a linear style with mentions, quotes, and backlinks (a la Discourse) strikes the best balance for most conversations. But of course we'll never all agree.

[ori_b]

Here's the wonderful thing about email and nntp: It provides a list of backlinks, and it's up to clients to decide to render it in the form of either backlinks and mentions, or in the form of threads, instead of forcing the choice on you.

[sanderjd]

That sounds very nice in theory, but in practice I've never seen an implementation that is as easy (for me!) to follow as Github's or Discourse's linear flow. Links to the great implementations that I've missed are very welcome!

[ori_b]

I have no idea what you find easy to follow -- I have no idea what's going on in a typical Github or Discourse thread. Gmail is also pretty confusing.

[sanderjd]

Do you mean you have no idea what I find easy to follow, or that you can't understand how I find it easy to follow? I don't have any trouble at all with the typical Github or Discourse thread, and I don't think there's anything confusing about Gmail. On the other hand, when I go to Gmane or someplace, things seem all over the place. But I recognize that my experience isn't universal. Like I said, we'll never all agree. I really like the idea of leaving it up to a client to organize things however works best for an individual, but I'm not aware of a good implementation of such a thing.

[ori_b]

I mean that my idea of 'easy to follow' is far enough off yours that I haven't looked for what you're looking for, and I have no good way to really evaluate any examples I could google up.