This is difficult. It should look more like a DAG than a tree, but we don't have a good UI for DAG comment threads yet.

Interesting idea ! That makes me think about a system where you can reply to multiple comments at once.

You mean like email and usenet's in-reply-to[1][2]?

Sure, not many, if any, clients handle an arbitrary list of message id's there, but it's clear[3] that's what it's for.

[1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc822#section-4.6.2

[2]: https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html

[3]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322#section-3.6.4

Thanks for the links, I don't know anything about usenet beside the fact that it exists, and didn't even know it was possible for email too.

I'll search for examples of UI used for many in-reply-to, it seems interesting.

I'm intrigued - how would you envision the posts and comments working?

Magically? Jokes apart, it'd be something like Pythagoras posts a link to his theory, with threads going until a paradigm change prompts another link and thread, and so on, and then Newton, and Max Planck... you know, implementation details.

I have much more imagination than skills.

Harness the compulsive debate potential of internet forums by socially crediting discourse graphs from their sources.

>I have much more imagination than skills.

same!