@evan @julian @angus @nutomic yeah, i'm just saying that crawling the tree is optional if you already have context. pleroma for example presents things in a flat chronological list, like an imageboard.
example: post 3 is a reply to post 1, it has replies in posts 4 5 and 87. post 6 is in reply to post 2. there's an option to show the tree as indentation. if that option is disabled, you see posts in order 1 2 3 4 5 ... 87. if that option is enabled you see posts in order 1 2 6 3 4 5 87 and so on