> find all this new software, where conversions are "threaded" stupidly hard to read.
This is not new, it just isn't applied to web based forums as much as I (someone who likes threaded discussions like that) would like. For small discussions it make little difference, for large branching threads it can help greatly when you don't care to follow all the sub-threads. It was not uncommon in Usenet clients back in the day. Of course it needs to be coupled with good UI for collapsing branches and otherwise navigating the tree, and perhaps a chronological view option for issue who prefer that (or a tree-view with posts spaced by arrival order for the best of both of you do it right - I had a reader that did that but can't currently remember it's name).
This is not new, it just isn't applied to web based forums as much as I (someone who likes threaded discussions like that) would like. For small discussions it make little difference, for large branching threads it can help greatly when you don't care to follow all the sub-threads. It was not uncommon in Usenet clients back in the day. Of course it needs to be coupled with good UI for collapsing branches and otherwise navigating the tree, and perhaps a chronological view option for issue who prefer that (or a tree-view with posts spaced by arrival order for the best of both of you do it right - I had a reader that did that but can't currently remember it's name).