[rectang]

Yes, of course there are workarounds; no matter what scenario you or I come up with, the other will be able to propose a different way of doing things. I chose a deliberately trivial example because I was illustrating a fundamental aspect of Git's design, not trying to stump you. But we're talking past each other.

[u801e]

I don't think we're talking past each other because you weren't involved in this subthread until your comment about using git branch -d.

[rectang]

But one of my comments (†) is the great-grandparent of your first comment on the subthread? (∆) And the concept of preserving commits precisely is fundamental to my comment two generations above that, the one about "nirvana" (‡) ?

    [article]
     properdine
      pabs3
       rectang (‡)
        pabs3
         rectang (†)
          pabs3
           WorldMaker
            u801e (∆)

Perhaps we would benefit from an `hn log` function which displays the linear parentage history for comments? (It would be easier to design that `git log` because every comment has exactly one parent, there are no `hn merge` comments.)

Or in your working copy has my authorship info been lost? That can happen if a committer uses plain old `patch -p1` to apply a diff from the mailing list rather than `hn am`. :D

[u801e]

> Or in your working copy has my authorship info been lost?

Well, none of the text that you originally wrote in the comment you're referencing wasn't preserved on the working copy. And, unless it's quoted, and one could search for when it was introduced by running git log -S"a line from your comment", no one is going to search for it specifically. IOW, the thread moved on :).