your reply was just in-line with this conversation. I never dismissed it. And the whole conversation notched down to make room for a comment made 10 minutes after you made this one.
Ah, I now see what you're saying. I didn't realize I was supposed to dismiss the reply, so I've never done it before. But this reply was at the top of my notifications despite my not dismissing it while the other reply remained in the tree. So it does seem like the dismiss works at times but not others since I don't ever hit it, and sometimes the reply will be at the top of my notifications and other times, it will be embedded in the tree. In any case, thanks for letting me know that I should be dismissing my notifications. That's helpful to know.
Haha! Egads. You're right. That's not what I wanted to do at all. I hit the dismiss all, thinking it would clear the 'cookie' for new replies. I didn't realize they would all disappear. I like having the history on where I've been so I can look back and find the places I've participated. Lesson learned. I won't be hitting that again. I'll try to be less hasty in the future. Thanks for bringing up this topic. I'm learning a lot.