Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zarzavat 567 days ago
You need to know what ordering the other user is seeing, otherwise dangerous misunderstandings could result, for example you reply "yes" but it's in reply to a different message than the other side is seeing.

If I see that another message has arrived and my message could be misunderstood, I can correct that by sending another message. But if I don't know what ordering the other side is seeing then I don't know if my message is ambiguous or not.

The only way achieve that is to show a consistent ordering to both participants (or to force every message to be in reply to another message but that's too nerdy)