Spent a long time not even knowing you can resolve merges in github. All I knew was magit and smerge, and assumed people with the fancier editors had something similar.

> Email is just used to receive the patch, you should use a tool meant for the job to actually do the merge.

I know because I also actually did this.

You still had to do this locally and then turn it into an email and had no real indication whether someone else had seen/tried/reviewed/etc. it

> However; today tools like the git cli itself, or magit + smerge-mode (my personal preference) are as good as GitHub, if not better.

I can totally believe for you: this is the case. For most people, though: it will not be. Feel free to prove me wrong by creating a(nother) project that gets thousands of contributors entirely through email.

(If you're actually Linus Torvalds, though: you win, I'll shut up now)