Inbound link is another term for Reply. But we're very much sticking with the web as the model. Links can go around and around, and of course can be circular. Behind this approach is a directed graph, with a source and destination. This goes in a table called Edges. It's all managed in SQL.

I am going to create the first post that has replies, and this is that post.

I created it the normal way you create a post, I chose New Post from the menu, and started filling it in. 

I chose a site, I put it on daveverse because I want to do this part out in the open. Gave it a category of Testing, and set the title in a boring way, so as only to interest the nerdiest of the nerds, like you — if you're reading this. 

Then I will write a bunch of replies, in the site I use for replies, it's a preference setting so I don't have to remember to do it. Each reply will generate an email for notification, and give me a chance to read the reply and decide whether it should be published alongside the original, but that's a high bar for me, it has to be something an informed person would want to know. And it can't be personal, it has to be respectful to everyone, esp the reader, and extra esp to the author of the post that's being replied to.

But it's key that we're all writing on the same plane. There is no difference between a comment and a post. I like different contexts for reading, but only one place to write, and it should have exactly the same writing features and power as the thing you're replying to. I think communities will organize themselves differently with this way of doing it. 

When it works maybe I'll post a screen shot here. 😉