I don't think the paradigm needs to change, I think the UI does (although I'm admittedly not clear what should be different). To me the proof that the paradigm

I don't think the paradigm needs to change, I think the UI does (although I'm admittedly not clear what should be different). To me the proof that the paradigm is good and it's a 'just' a UI problem is MS Teams. Teams has basically the same thread system - every message in a Teams channel is in a 'conversation'. When a whole org adopts Teams sometimes it takes some people a little time to learn not to create a conversation for every reply (my partner's company is non-technical and had this for a couple of people) but once you're going the system is clear to a new joiner. At my company (an engineering org) the thread system is universally used, works extremely well, and I've never encountered anyone who wasn't clear how it worked. The big difference is that in Teams you don't have to name your 'conversation'. You can optionally give it a title if you want, but it's not necessary and that "what do I call it" step was always a bit of a mental speedbump in Zulip for my team.