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Great product! Still don’t know why they don’t give the user the option of disabling threaded conversations for self or for entire organization. People have bee

Great product! Still don’t know why they don’t give the user the option of disabling threaded conversations for self or for entire organization. People have been asking for it for years. Ref: https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/822064778269102080?lang=en https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/822064778269102080?lang=e... At least allow me as an individual user to see all messages sequentially without any threads. I am willing to do mental context switches. I prefer doing that to losing messages in old threads.

xfitm3 7y ago
Slack is hostile towards users. They aggressively push a narrative that if Slack is annoying - its a management problem.
- noxToken 7y ago
  How is Slack any different than any other instant messaging application? Hangouts, Jabber, Discord, Rocket Chat, and even WebEx or GoToMeeting - you can disable notifications, completely ignore, or even sign out of all of these applications. I'm not saying that Slack are the good guys, but if your managers are forcing you to have all notifications on at all times and using @channel for every message, then it really is your management.
  - drb91 7y ago
    I can’t speak for the others but Jabber allows you control of the client. The notification settings in chat apps for enterprise are, as a rule, terrible.
  - xfitm3 7y ago
    Slack is not flexible or customizable - when basic features like muting someone are requested you're told that you are using Slack wrong. The notion of a one size fits all solution is flawed.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - noxToken 7y ago
      Well now I feel stupid. We use Slack at work, but it's not our official communication channel. I've never needed to block or mute individuals. I didn't know that it couldn't be done.
    - BoorishBears 7y ago
      Your told that because it’s true. If someone is sending you messages that are so useless you need to mute them, either your organization is seriously disfunctional or you shouldn’t be in Slack.
      - andrewprock 7y ago
        Unfortunately disfunctioal cultures are widespread. If you can only solve the problems of Ivory Towers, you are not going to have many customers.
        BoorishBears 7y ago
        Well apparently they have many customers so...
jfoster 7y ago
I think threaded conversations become more important as an organisation's channels become increasingly noisy. Threaded conversations can partly alleviate that. They probably want to prevent organisations from disabling a feature that may assist with their scaling on slack.
- sinatra 7y ago
  The problem is that threads lead to missed messages. That’s a bigger problem than potential of noise. At least allow a user to decide if they want to see messages in threads or not.
  - np_tedious 7y ago
    Threaded messages arguably allow for less fragmentation into other channels / DMs, and they have the checkbox for a particularly important message to be sent to both the thread and main convo. I'm a thread fan from the start, and I've observed many who were initially skeptical start using them heavily
raldi 7y ago
They also don't give the option of disabling vowels.
- sinatra 7y ago
  That’s an unnecessarily hostile comment. I want to disable threads for myself so I don’t miss important messages. What’s your use case for disabling vowels? And where’s your list of people genuinely asking for disabling vowels for years?
  - raldi 7y ago
    I'm sorry; I've just seen this attitude so many times in my career of, "Why not just create an option for this thing that would completely upend the way the product works?", which doubles the number of possible things you then need to test for, complicates the product, slows down development, adds technical debt, bloats the software, and clutters up the options screen. I'm on a couple slacks, some where local culture is firmly built on threading, and some where it's not, and the former is at least 10x more productive and enjoyable. If other members of the community had the option to view things threadlessly, they would start replying to threads in the main channel, and ruin the experience for everyone else. You might say this wouldn't happen much, but think about how hard it is just to get your coworkers to stop using @here frivolously.
    - sinatra 7y ago
      Thank you for turning the conversation more polite. I agree with you about options having a cost. However, if so many of your users are complaining about something, and if the complaint is about something as important as “losing messages,” then something should be done about it. It’s no longer enough to say that “but it works for some people” or to say that “options add complexity.” Our entire core team has discussed this. Nobody wants threads. They all lose messages due to this. But sometimes we accidentally respond to messages that start a thread. So, we want this option to be removed for the entire organization. But we can’t. It’s an option that’ll have cost, yes. But, it’ll be much simpler than many other complicated (and low value) things Slack has worked on in past two years. Those other things are also adding complexity, slowing down dev, increasing things to test, etc. And, again, this option solves a serious and fundamental problem of losing messages. So, it’s worth the cost for many of their users.
drb91 7y ago
If you’re expecting Slack to meet your needs as an end user, it’s never going to happen.

xfitm3 7y ago

Slack is hostile towards users. They aggressively push a narrative that if Slack is annoying - its a management problem.

noxToken 7y ago
How is Slack any different than any other instant messaging application? Hangouts, Jabber, Discord, Rocket Chat, and even WebEx or GoToMeeting - you can disable notifications, completely ignore, or even sign out of all of these applications. I'm not saying that Slack are the good guys, but if your managers are forcing you to have all notifications on at all times and using @channel for every message, then it really is your management.
- drb91 7y ago
  I can’t speak for the others but Jabber allows you control of the client. The notification settings in chat apps for enterprise are, as a rule, terrible.
- xfitm3 7y ago
  Slack is not flexible or customizable - when basic features like muting someone are requested you're told that you are using Slack wrong. The notion of a one size fits all solution is flawed.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - noxToken 7y ago
    Well now I feel stupid. We use Slack at work, but it's not our official communication channel. I've never needed to block or mute individuals. I didn't know that it couldn't be done.
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    Your told that because it’s true. If someone is sending you messages that are so useless you need to mute them, either your organization is seriously disfunctional or you shouldn’t be in Slack.
    - andrewprock 7y ago
      Unfortunately disfunctioal cultures are widespread. If you can only solve the problems of Ivory Towers, you are not going to have many customers.
      - BoorishBears 7y ago
        Well apparently they have many customers so...

jfoster 7y ago

I think threaded conversations become more important as an organisation's channels become increasingly noisy. Threaded conversations can partly alleviate that. They probably want to prevent organisations from disabling a feature that may assist with their scaling on slack.

sinatra 7y ago
The problem is that threads lead to missed messages. That’s a bigger problem than potential of noise. At least allow a user to decide if they want to see messages in threads or not.
- np_tedious 7y ago
  Threaded messages arguably allow for less fragmentation into other channels / DMs, and they have the checkbox for a particularly important message to be sent to both the thread and main convo. I'm a thread fan from the start, and I've observed many who were initially skeptical start using them heavily

raldi 7y ago

They also don't give the option of disabling vowels.

sinatra 7y ago
That’s an unnecessarily hostile comment. I want to disable threads for myself so I don’t miss important messages. What’s your use case for disabling vowels? And where’s your list of people genuinely asking for disabling vowels for years?
- raldi 7y ago
  I'm sorry; I've just seen this attitude so many times in my career of, "Why not just create an option for this thing that would completely upend the way the product works?", which doubles the number of possible things you then need to test for, complicates the product, slows down development, adds technical debt, bloats the software, and clutters up the options screen. I'm on a couple slacks, some where local culture is firmly built on threading, and some where it's not, and the former is at least 10x more productive and enjoyable. If other members of the community had the option to view things threadlessly, they would start replying to threads in the main channel, and ruin the experience for everyone else. You might say this wouldn't happen much, but think about how hard it is just to get your coworkers to stop using @here frivolously.
  - sinatra 7y ago
    Thank you for turning the conversation more polite. I agree with you about options having a cost. However, if so many of your users are complaining about something, and if the complaint is about something as important as “losing messages,” then something should be done about it. It’s no longer enough to say that “but it works for some people” or to say that “options add complexity.” Our entire core team has discussed this. Nobody wants threads. They all lose messages due to this. But sometimes we accidentally respond to messages that start a thread. So, we want this option to be removed for the entire organization. But we can’t. It’s an option that’ll have cost, yes. But, it’ll be much simpler than many other complicated (and low value) things Slack has worked on in past two years. Those other things are also adding complexity, slowing down dev, increasing things to test, etc. And, again, this option solves a serious and fundamental problem of losing messages. So, it’s worth the cost for many of their users.

drb91 7y ago

If you’re expecting Slack to meet your needs as an end user, it’s never going to happen.