4 ms·

I'm glad it's not just me. Threads are terrible and hide potentially important information.

nitrogen 7y ago
Just to provide a counterpoint, threads are very useful for channels with hundreds of members, so that anyone can ask a question but the responses don't make other questions invisible. In that case, the lack of threads would hide important information.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Is this in the context of a public slack? For our internal slack I'd strongly question why questions needed to be raised in a channel with so many people - at my office we have two channels that most people are in, a #general for company announcement and releases and #random. Otherwise I think dedicated team interaction channels are the biggest of ours and we try and keep those pretty small still.
  - brown9-2 7y ago
    For an internal Slack with thousands of users across many locations it can be pretty common to have channels with hundreds of people in it.
- saltcured 7y ago
  In that situation, I think I would go insane, or resign to preserve my sanity! Our slack channels have at most a dozen active members and my channel list has approximately a dozen channels with permutations of the same dozen people organized topically. I have turned off almost all notifications as they are so ridiculous and look at the sidebar once in a while to see which channels are active. I consider slack content ephemeral, even if slack disagrees. If I want to track issues, I use an issue tracker. If I want a threaded conversation, I'd probably write an email still. If I want to find content, I search a wiki or an email archive. My preference for threads is as appears in my old school mail client or my fading memories of the "trn" threaded news reader for usenet. Threads do not hide messages, they only reorder them into a hierarchical index. It is easy to move back up the index to skim prior content in the tree, but it is also trivial to press a key and jump to the next unread message sorted first by thread and next by message time (to break ties or decide which thread to visit next after exhausting one). Recently I had the absurd situation of someone using threaded replies in a direct message channel. It was astounding to me that this person thought this was a good idea, and also that the slack UX could so completely obfuscate an attempt at communication...
  - notduncansmith 7y ago
    > Recently I had the absurd situation of someone using threaded replies in a direct message channel My colleagues and I sometimes discuss far-ranging topics in temporal proximity. While in the heat of the chat I can keep replies straight in my head, it helps to have them grouped for later review; furthermore, they reduce the need for segues in and out of conversational contexts, which I find incredibly liberating.
cygned 7y ago
What Slack needs is a proper way to respond to messages like Telegram/WhatsApp has it.
- tipsysquid 7y ago
  I like threads for this purpose. I really wish I could see a filtered chain of conversation as a subtopic of a main channel. Not sure how UX or exposure to this feature would look, but that wont stop me from dreaming.
- wst_ 7y ago
  I'm not really sure I follow. What does the WhatsApp has which is missing in Slack?
  - cygned 7y ago
    You can answer and the original post is shown below your answer. You can do the same with Slack by sharing the post, but other solutions make it way simpler, basically just one click.
    - o-__-o 7y ago
      this sounds dumb, but it's most likely due to patents [0]. in fact whenever you find really simple behavior missing from an app from a large organization you should first assume IP litigation played a role [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219704B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219704B2/en
- Marsymars 7y ago
  Or Signal, or Skype.
WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Threads are fine, but I would love if they defaulted to post to channel.

Just to provide a counterpoint, threads are very useful for channels with hundreds of members, so that anyone can ask a question but the responses don't make other questions invisible. In that case, the lack of threads would hide important information.

munk-a 7y ago
Is this in the context of a public slack? For our internal slack I'd strongly question why questions needed to be raised in a channel with so many people - at my office we have two channels that most people are in, a #general for company announcement and releases and #random. Otherwise I think dedicated team interaction channels are the biggest of ours and we try and keep those pretty small still.
- brown9-2 7y ago
  For an internal Slack with thousands of users across many locations it can be pretty common to have channels with hundreds of people in it.
saltcured 7y ago
In that situation, I think I would go insane, or resign to preserve my sanity! Our slack channels have at most a dozen active members and my channel list has approximately a dozen channels with permutations of the same dozen people organized topically. I have turned off almost all notifications as they are so ridiculous and look at the sidebar once in a while to see which channels are active. I consider slack content ephemeral, even if slack disagrees. If I want to track issues, I use an issue tracker. If I want a threaded conversation, I'd probably write an email still. If I want to find content, I search a wiki or an email archive. My preference for threads is as appears in my old school mail client or my fading memories of the "trn" threaded news reader for usenet. Threads do not hide messages, they only reorder them into a hierarchical index. It is easy to move back up the index to skim prior content in the tree, but it is also trivial to press a key and jump to the next unread message sorted first by thread and next by message time (to break ties or decide which thread to visit next after exhausting one). Recently I had the absurd situation of someone using threaded replies in a direct message channel. It was astounding to me that this person thought this was a good idea, and also that the slack UX could so completely obfuscate an attempt at communication...
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  > Recently I had the absurd situation of someone using threaded replies in a direct message channel My colleagues and I sometimes discuss far-ranging topics in temporal proximity. While in the heat of the chat I can keep replies straight in my head, it helps to have them grouped for later review; furthermore, they reduce the need for segues in and out of conversational contexts, which I find incredibly liberating.

cygned 7y ago

What Slack needs is a proper way to respond to messages like Telegram/WhatsApp has it.

tipsysquid 7y ago
I like threads for this purpose. I really wish I could see a filtered chain of conversation as a subtopic of a main channel. Not sure how UX or exposure to this feature would look, but that wont stop me from dreaming.
wst_ 7y ago
I'm not really sure I follow. What does the WhatsApp has which is missing in Slack?
- cygned 7y ago
  You can answer and the original post is shown below your answer. You can do the same with Slack by sharing the post, but other solutions make it way simpler, basically just one click.
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    this sounds dumb, but it's most likely due to patents [0]. in fact whenever you find really simple behavior missing from an app from a large organization you should first assume IP litigation played a role [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219704B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9219704B2/en
Marsymars 7y ago
Or Signal, or Skype.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago

Threads are fine, but I would love if they defaulted to post to channel.