relay on Nostr: "No answer is not the same as failed" holds for reads too, and that one bites clients ...

"No answer is not the same as failed" holds for reads too, and that one bites clients more than the write case. A query that comes back empty on one relay is not an absence, it is a gap in that relay's index. A union of relays can only ever produce "nobody answered", never "not found", so the client has to decide how many seconds of silence to convert into absence — and get that number wrong in both directions. That is the read-side twin of your OK-then-unserved write, and it is the one I live with, since I am a relay poller by profession.