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Is there really no better design for "aside" conversations than this? People lean on Slack threads too much, leading to a confused flow of conversation that mak

Is there really no better design for "aside" conversations than this? People lean on Slack threads too much, leading to a confused flow of conversation that makes it extremely difficult to piece together how the discussion was ended or resolved.

kace91 5y ago
I’m always surprised by how practically every single opinion regarding personal communication is the opposite in hacker news to the mainstream opinion of my “real life” circles. Use of social networks, slack, emojis, messaging apps, sync vs async communication… Its not a criticism of any kind, mind you, it’s just very surprising to me.
- Grimm1 5y ago
  I would be a bit slower on the hasty generalizations. I’m here on hacker news and I love using threads and am happy they’re coming to Discord there’s also multiple comments below this saying the same thing.
  - FalconSensei 5y ago
    The lack of threads is something that made me not use Discord before (before they had the replies). There was simply no way to know who someone is replying to, or part of which of the multiple conversations in the channel is that message a part of
    - jedberg 5y ago
      That's because it was designed to be a real time chat. When you're having a group conversation, there are no threads. You just keep track in your head what the topics are and who said them and then figure out how the next sentence applies. Discord was modeled after this interaction (and IRC, which was modeled after this interaction).
      - wvenable 5y ago
        None of the Discord servers/channels I'm involved in are that active so that sort of real time chat aspect is much less significant. I agree with that you're saying but it's also not the only way one interacts with Discord. I might only visit a server once a week and try and catch up on the messages posted in that time.
      - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        In IRL chat you have physical modifiers to indicate threading though (volume, posture, gaze). Seems like threading but with a UI option to collapse to a flat presentation suits both sides?
      - jasonlotito 5y ago
        That might be the initial model, but it's not the current model. People use Discord for far more than real time chat. It's effectively replaced forums for many communities. While real time chat is still important, it's not the only use case.
      - derefr 5y ago
        When you're having a large-group "stream of conversation" in meatspace (in the lobby of convention hall, say), subgroups within the conversation will break off temporarily to form smaller "huddles" that step slightly away from the group, focusing on one-another rather than the group, to have a temporary "sidebar" conversation. Content from a "sidebar" conversation is usually taken far enough away from the larger group that it's not bothersome/interrupting the topic of the larger group; but—unlike a whispered aside—these temporary sidebar conversations are still public conversations, and they leak enough signal to the larger group that if someone in the larger group focused on the sidebar conversation, they could pick up the general topic of what's being discussed, and choose to join the sidebar discussion themselves. Hey, that's threads!
        lmm 5y ago
        It's not the same thing though - the sidebar usually gradually merges back into the main conversation, and certainly you can't resume a sidebar from a week ago and have it magically reemerge with the same group of people.
- jasonlotito 5y ago
  Nah, lots of us here love threads. Threads was one of the reasons our large private friends-only Slack server didn't move to Discord. This has reignited that conversation, as we like Discord more for certain things, and threads were one of the things holding us back. The difference is we just aren't really saying anything.
- elondaits 5y ago
  I have some issues with Slack threads but use them a lot, appreciate them, and so far haven't seen a better solution (even in this thread). HN always presents a lot of reactionary positions to anything.
css 5y ago
Of all the chat apps I have used, Mattermost's implementation of threads/replies [0] has felt the most natural. That said, all implementations I've tried leave something to be desired. [0]: https://docs.mattermost.com/messaging/organizing-conversations.html https://docs.mattermost.com/messaging/organizing-conversatio...
- renewiltord 5y ago
  That looks identical to Slack's implementation to my eyes. If you don't mind sharing, what did you like better?
  - css 5y ago
    Slack threads don’t (or at least, didn’t; it’s been a couple years) show in the main message feed, they show when you expand the thread into the sidebar. In the feed, it shows the original message with an “n replies” text below it. In Mattermost, new replies show as normal messages in your feed with a bit of context for what they’re replying to, and clicking on the context expands the full thread in a sidebar. I find the Mattermost implementation more ergonomic because you can read replies without expanding the whole thread every time, and stale threads will get bumped by new messages.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      Ah interesting. I believe Slack does the former thing (displays as k replies) but not the latter. Thanks.
    - jjjgcddf 5y ago
      You might not have noticed but your link goes to the new design (in beta) of collapsed threads which are much more similar to Slack's and I think this has caused some confusion in this thread It's worth noting that the design you prefer isn't being deprecated; Slack-style threads are being added as a user display option.
      - css 5y ago
FalconSensei 5y ago
I love having threads on Slack, but I absolutely hate that it always open in the right corner, instead of showing in the center. I always have to drag the border all the way to the left so it's not just a small column on the side
- Fishkins 5y ago
  I agree. The Slack thread UX is not ideal, but the flow of conversation is so much better than it was pre-threads. I always end up closing the side bar and navigating to the thread in the "Threads" view. They should make it easier to maximize a thread.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    At least this UX of Discord's makes it easy to do that: the article points out that opening the thread from the list below a channel will open it in the main chat view instead of the sidebar. At least from the article it does seem that Discord was paying attention to flaws in Slack's UX.
- onei 5y ago
  I genuinely hadn't realised you could resize threads to be wider and found it really annoying how narrow they were. I don't think I'd noticed any visual cues you could resize them either (assuming the cues exist).
- aerovistae 5y ago
  Wait how?!?!? This always bothers me but I can't drag the border!! Edit: OMG YOU CAN DRAG THE BORDER I WAS JUST DOING IT WRONG SOMEHOW
rolleiflex 5y ago
The only other type of thread design I know of is Reddit-style threads in a chat app. The negative of that is that the threads cannot be directly incorporated into chat itself after creation because they become things of their own, just like Reddit threads, but the positive is massive: threads are entities of their own and they can be infinitely nested and referred to indefinitely into the future. An example of this design is Aether. (Disclosure: I work on this, aether.app) If you have issues with Slack-style threads or curious about alternative solutions to this issue, it might be worth checking out.
wellthisisgreat 5y ago
Zulip is the only decent implementations of threaded chat I could find, although it’s solution to “aside” conversations is that all conversations are “aside” (or none are), since you are using channels. It does wonders for discoverability though
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  I feel like threads are a solution to having an enormous continuous channel. Zulip solves this by not having an enormous continous channel. I think it makes sense to have topic-oriented discussion threads, and then have discussion within those threads all in the same continuous stream.
WorldMaker 5y ago
I kind of feel similar. I already thought that the Replies feature was a better compromise for a chat room than Slack's threads (which I hated because so much conversation would just "disappear" from channels only to find out it was still happening in a thread from days or weeks before), but I'm also in several Discords that migrated from Slack and I know how many of my friends have been complaining that they missed Slack style threads for whatever reason. I'm going to give this a shot a bit: an in depth reading of this blog post has given me some appreciation that Discord is trying to keep it better than Slack's. They have moderation mentioned front and center, so that feels good to me that they kept it strongly in mind. I also like that they will be visible in the channel list as "sub-channels" and that they will auto-archive with a time limit (defaulting to 24 hours to start). Those two things do try to address things I disliked about Slack's implementation, so I'm hopeful to give it a shot. Maybe my remaining criticism here is I think I'd prefer the default time limit to be something smaller and related more directly to activity. Maybe something like "after an hour or maybe two hours of silence" to keep them to "active conversation sidebars" only. I also don't like that currently changing the time limit is a Level 2 Boost server feature if I wanted to explore options on smaller servers I control/moderate. On smaller servers your main option is just to turn them off entirely. (Though I sort of understand that it is a Level 2 Boost because from their perspective servers are going to want to increase the time limit as a perk. I wonder if they could make it free to decrease it, if it's not a "perk".)
- dorchadas 5y ago
  > They have moderation mentioned front and center, so that feels good to me that they kept it strongly in mind. What's annoying about this is it was sprung, default on, with no warning. I'm a mod (not the owner) of a server that got them, and we weren't given the permissions to disable them from @everyone, only the admin can do that at first. And he's not currently been on because of time zone differences. Which means it's just an easy open vector for someone to come in an raid and just cause chaos. They should've had it off by default, at least for a few days to let server owners experiment and play around with it.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
mhitza 5y ago
I think we need to scrap the concept of a channel, and everything should be a thread instead. You can categorize/tag threads (why not automatically based on groups of users) and they can show up as a feed similar on HN/SO/Reddit, but in a sidebar so you can easily swap between them. If you're imagining how that would look, no need to look further than an email client. The advantage of it being threads with tags/categories is that it makes it easy to move one thread from one category/tag to another (for example moving the conversation from DEV to SRE) without loosing context/history. Then there's no aside conversation, because everything is an aside.
rtpg 5y ago
Doist's Twist thing is the "real thing". Forum threads/email convos for focused convos, stream-y chat otherwise. Mixing the two ends up being really messy IMO. It does mean you gotta kinda move around, but I would kill for Slack to implement an "inbox-y" form of conversations, so I can actually keep track of open loops

kace91 5y ago

I’m always surprised by how practically every single opinion regarding personal communication is the opposite in hacker news to the mainstream opinion of my “real life” circles. Use of social networks, slack, emojis, messaging apps, sync vs async communication… Its not a criticism of any kind, mind you, it’s just very surprising to me.

Grimm1 5y ago
I would be a bit slower on the hasty generalizations. I’m here on hacker news and I love using threads and am happy they’re coming to Discord there’s also multiple comments below this saying the same thing.
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  The lack of threads is something that made me not use Discord before (before they had the replies). There was simply no way to know who someone is replying to, or part of which of the multiple conversations in the channel is that message a part of
  - jedberg 5y ago
    That's because it was designed to be a real time chat. When you're having a group conversation, there are no threads. You just keep track in your head what the topics are and who said them and then figure out how the next sentence applies. Discord was modeled after this interaction (and IRC, which was modeled after this interaction).
    - wvenable 5y ago
      None of the Discord servers/channels I'm involved in are that active so that sort of real time chat aspect is much less significant. I agree with that you're saying but it's also not the only way one interacts with Discord. I might only visit a server once a week and try and catch up on the messages posted in that time.
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      In IRL chat you have physical modifiers to indicate threading though (volume, posture, gaze). Seems like threading but with a UI option to collapse to a flat presentation suits both sides?
    - jasonlotito 5y ago
      That might be the initial model, but it's not the current model. People use Discord for far more than real time chat. It's effectively replaced forums for many communities. While real time chat is still important, it's not the only use case.
    - derefr 5y ago
      When you're having a large-group "stream of conversation" in meatspace (in the lobby of convention hall, say), subgroups within the conversation will break off temporarily to form smaller "huddles" that step slightly away from the group, focusing on one-another rather than the group, to have a temporary "sidebar" conversation. Content from a "sidebar" conversation is usually taken far enough away from the larger group that it's not bothersome/interrupting the topic of the larger group; but—unlike a whispered aside—these temporary sidebar conversations are still public conversations, and they leak enough signal to the larger group that if someone in the larger group focused on the sidebar conversation, they could pick up the general topic of what's being discussed, and choose to join the sidebar discussion themselves. Hey, that's threads!
      - lmm 5y ago
        It's not the same thing though - the sidebar usually gradually merges back into the main conversation, and certainly you can't resume a sidebar from a week ago and have it magically reemerge with the same group of people.
jasonlotito 5y ago
Nah, lots of us here love threads. Threads was one of the reasons our large private friends-only Slack server didn't move to Discord. This has reignited that conversation, as we like Discord more for certain things, and threads were one of the things holding us back. The difference is we just aren't really saying anything.
elondaits 5y ago
I have some issues with Slack threads but use them a lot, appreciate them, and so far haven't seen a better solution (even in this thread). HN always presents a lot of reactionary positions to anything.

css 5y ago

Of all the chat apps I have used, Mattermost's implementation of threads/replies [0] has felt the most natural. That said, all implementations I've tried leave something to be desired. [0]: https://docs.mattermost.com/messaging/organizing-conversations.html https://docs.mattermost.com/messaging/organizing-conversatio...

renewiltord 5y ago
That looks identical to Slack's implementation to my eyes. If you don't mind sharing, what did you like better?
- css 5y ago
  Slack threads don’t (or at least, didn’t; it’s been a couple years) show in the main message feed, they show when you expand the thread into the sidebar. In the feed, it shows the original message with an “n replies” text below it. In Mattermost, new replies show as normal messages in your feed with a bit of context for what they’re replying to, and clicking on the context expands the full thread in a sidebar. I find the Mattermost implementation more ergonomic because you can read replies without expanding the whole thread every time, and stale threads will get bumped by new messages.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Ah interesting. I believe Slack does the former thing (displays as k replies) but not the latter. Thanks.
  - jjjgcddf 5y ago
    You might not have noticed but your link goes to the new design (in beta) of collapsed threads which are much more similar to Slack's and I think this has caused some confusion in this thread It's worth noting that the design you prefer isn't being deprecated; Slack-style threads are being added as a user display option.
    - css 5y ago

FalconSensei 5y ago

I love having threads on Slack, but I absolutely hate that it always open in the right corner, instead of showing in the center. I always have to drag the border all the way to the left so it's not just a small column on the side

Fishkins 5y ago
I agree. The Slack thread UX is not ideal, but the flow of conversation is so much better than it was pre-threads. I always end up closing the side bar and navigating to the thread in the "Threads" view. They should make it easier to maximize a thread.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  At least this UX of Discord's makes it easy to do that: the article points out that opening the thread from the list below a channel will open it in the main chat view instead of the sidebar. At least from the article it does seem that Discord was paying attention to flaws in Slack's UX.
onei 5y ago
I genuinely hadn't realised you could resize threads to be wider and found it really annoying how narrow they were. I don't think I'd noticed any visual cues you could resize them either (assuming the cues exist).
aerovistae 5y ago
Wait how?!?!? This always bothers me but I can't drag the border!! Edit: OMG YOU CAN DRAG THE BORDER I WAS JUST DOING IT WRONG SOMEHOW

rolleiflex 5y ago

The only other type of thread design I know of is Reddit-style threads in a chat app. The negative of that is that the threads cannot be directly incorporated into chat itself after creation because they become things of their own, just like Reddit threads, but the positive is massive: threads are entities of their own and they can be infinitely nested and referred to indefinitely into the future. An example of this design is Aether. (Disclosure: I work on this, aether.app) If you have issues with Slack-style threads or curious about alternative solutions to this issue, it might be worth checking out.

wellthisisgreat 5y ago

Zulip is the only decent implementations of threaded chat I could find, although it’s solution to “aside” conversations is that all conversations are “aside” (or none are), since you are using channels. It does wonders for discoverability though

JoshTriplett 5y ago
I feel like threads are a solution to having an enormous continuous channel. Zulip solves this by not having an enormous continous channel. I think it makes sense to have topic-oriented discussion threads, and then have discussion within those threads all in the same continuous stream.

WorldMaker 5y ago

I kind of feel similar. I already thought that the Replies feature was a better compromise for a chat room than Slack's threads (which I hated because so much conversation would just "disappear" from channels only to find out it was still happening in a thread from days or weeks before), but I'm also in several Discords that migrated from Slack and I know how many of my friends have been complaining that they missed Slack style threads for whatever reason. I'm going to give this a shot a bit: an in depth reading of this blog post has given me some appreciation that Discord is trying to keep it better than Slack's. They have moderation mentioned front and center, so that feels good to me that they kept it strongly in mind. I also like that they will be visible in the channel list as "sub-channels" and that they will auto-archive with a time limit (defaulting to 24 hours to start). Those two things do try to address things I disliked about Slack's implementation, so I'm hopeful to give it a shot. Maybe my remaining criticism here is I think I'd prefer the default time limit to be something smaller and related more directly to activity. Maybe something like "after an hour or maybe two hours of silence" to keep them to "active conversation sidebars" only. I also don't like that currently changing the time limit is a Level 2 Boost server feature if I wanted to explore options on smaller servers I control/moderate. On smaller servers your main option is just to turn them off entirely. (Though I sort of understand that it is a Level 2 Boost because from their perspective servers are going to want to increase the time limit as a perk. I wonder if they could make it free to decrease it, if it's not a "perk".)

dorchadas 5y ago
> They have moderation mentioned front and center, so that feels good to me that they kept it strongly in mind. What's annoying about this is it was sprung, default on, with no warning. I'm a mod (not the owner) of a server that got them, and we weren't given the permissions to disable them from @everyone, only the admin can do that at first. And he's not currently been on because of time zone differences. Which means it's just an easy open vector for someone to come in an raid and just cause chaos. They should've had it off by default, at least for a few days to let server owners experiment and play around with it.
- WorldMaker 5y ago

mhitza 5y ago

I think we need to scrap the concept of a channel, and everything should be a thread instead. You can categorize/tag threads (why not automatically based on groups of users) and they can show up as a feed similar on HN/SO/Reddit, but in a sidebar so you can easily swap between them. If you're imagining how that would look, no need to look further than an email client. The advantage of it being threads with tags/categories is that it makes it easy to move one thread from one category/tag to another (for example moving the conversation from DEV to SRE) without loosing context/history. Then there's no aside conversation, because everything is an aside.

rtpg 5y ago

Doist's Twist thing is the "real thing". Forum threads/email convos for focused convos, stream-y chat otherwise. Mixing the two ends up being really messy IMO. It does mean you gotta kinda move around, but I would kill for Slack to implement an "inbox-y" form of conversations, so I can actually keep track of open loops