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Threads are great for helping you to actively ignore a discussion, but discord is a casual discussion app. Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chim

Threads are great for helping you to actively ignore a discussion, but discord is a casual discussion app. Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying. Channels are used to group conversation topics that some people might want to ignore. I’d rather not have threads

arkitaip 5y ago
Discord is after Slack's market share and offering threads makes sense in many contexts where the discussion isn't casual.
- enraged_camel 5y ago
  Man, I wish Slack would implement Discords "reply" feature that automatically quotes the post and @mentions the poster.
  - DoctorShenan 5y ago
    I think it has it, it's just called something else.
    - leppr 5y ago
      Yes, the "share message" feature accomplishes roughly the same in a less seamless way.
      - rockostrich 5y ago
        It's less "seamless", but also more flexible. The Discord reply feature only works within the same channel while you can share slack messages anywhere, including in threads by linking. Linking to discord messages works, but there's no inline preview.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Man, I wish Discord would let you set it to not @mention by default.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    Counterpoint: I wish that feature would go away on Discord, it gets used a lot by very low information users to pester other people all the time. And its just annoying to see all the duplicated text. If you have several people in a discussion or there's two threads of conversation going on I sort of get the idea that you want to respond to a specific comment -- but there are ways to use the English language to indicate clearly what you're responding to. Even if its just "re: whatever, ..."
- movedx 5y ago
  I'm not certain why you're being downvoted, but you're right. Their recent rebranding demonstrates this.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Will Discord changes their single account system/policy? It's very annoying to use single account for various use other than only gaming community. I think this policy is a bigger blocker than lack of threads.
    - mattste 5y ago
      Agreed. My gaming persona is different than IRL persona. I personally love the way Slack handles accounts.
kowbell 5y ago
> Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying I’m of the completely opposite opinion. If I want to contribute to a prior discussion that happened a few minutes ago but another one is taking place now, then we have two separate conversations in the same linear chat stream. With a thread, I can respond to who I want without interrupting anyone else. Without threads, you’re reading through all the messages and trying to figure out which are relevant. Most of the Discords I’m in are game or mod related, and I’m often using their help/questions channels. There’s usually only one or two of these channels, so if multiple people need help at the same time you get scattered conversations and it’s confusing to follow, especially if you step away for a second. Direct replies to the messages help but they still exist in that linear main chat stream, so there’s still a lot of clutter that everyone has to navigate through. With threads, you can have multiple questions asked simultaneously and each one has all their discussion in their respective threads, making it very obvious which messages are meant for which question and making it easier to navigate.
- kowbell 5y ago
  Forgot to mention: at my job, Slack threads have been super useful. Three or four people can discuss one topic in an open channel (so others can join in and we can search history) without spamming notifications against everyone else. E.g. someone could put a message in #engineering about a bug. All the engineers get that notification so anyone who knows more details can chip in immediately. They then reply in a thread on the original bug message so they can discuss without everyone else getting bothered with irrelevant notifs AND without locking the conversation into a group DM where nobody else can chime in nor can we all easily search for it later if it’s relevant.
  - naavis 5y ago
    Exactly, this is how we use it too.
- tdeck 5y ago
  > If I want to contribute to a prior discussion that happened a few minutes ago but another one is taking place now, then we have two separate conversations in the same linear chat stream. This is also a feature that discourages a bunch of side conversations. If I've participated in conversations on 5 different topics that have moved on, it can sometimes be tiring to have those old threads reopened with more discussions. It's like having 3 text conversations while also being out to dinner with friends.
npunt 5y ago
> discord is a casual discussion app One way to keep that reputation is to not deploy features that enable more professional use cases. Perhaps they want to be more than a casual app? I personally like threads, they are a very minor bump in app complexity that can significantly improve context reassembly - the primary issue with chat apps.
- movedx 5y ago
  > One way to keep that reputation is to not deploy features that enable more professional use cases. Perhaps they want to be more than a casual app? They do, hence their recent rebranding that resulted in less of a "for gamers" image :)

arkitaip 5y ago

Discord is after Slack's market share and offering threads makes sense in many contexts where the discussion isn't casual.

enraged_camel 5y ago
Man, I wish Slack would implement Discords "reply" feature that automatically quotes the post and @mentions the poster.
- DoctorShenan 5y ago
  I think it has it, it's just called something else.
  - leppr 5y ago
    Yes, the "share message" feature accomplishes roughly the same in a less seamless way.
    - rockostrich 5y ago
      It's less "seamless", but also more flexible. The Discord reply feature only works within the same channel while you can share slack messages anywhere, including in threads by linking. Linking to discord messages works, but there's no inline preview.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Man, I wish Discord would let you set it to not @mention by default.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Counterpoint: I wish that feature would go away on Discord, it gets used a lot by very low information users to pester other people all the time. And its just annoying to see all the duplicated text. If you have several people in a discussion or there's two threads of conversation going on I sort of get the idea that you want to respond to a specific comment -- but there are ways to use the English language to indicate clearly what you're responding to. Even if its just "re: whatever, ..."
movedx 5y ago
I'm not certain why you're being downvoted, but you're right. Their recent rebranding demonstrates this.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Will Discord changes their single account system/policy? It's very annoying to use single account for various use other than only gaming community. I think this policy is a bigger blocker than lack of threads.
  - mattste 5y ago
    Agreed. My gaming persona is different than IRL persona. I personally love the way Slack handles accounts.

kowbell 5y ago

> Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying I’m of the completely opposite opinion. If I want to contribute to a prior discussion that happened a few minutes ago but another one is taking place now, then we have two separate conversations in the same linear chat stream. With a thread, I can respond to who I want without interrupting anyone else. Without threads, you’re reading through all the messages and trying to figure out which are relevant. Most of the Discords I’m in are game or mod related, and I’m often using their help/questions channels. There’s usually only one or two of these channels, so if multiple people need help at the same time you get scattered conversations and it’s confusing to follow, especially if you step away for a second. Direct replies to the messages help but they still exist in that linear main chat stream, so there’s still a lot of clutter that everyone has to navigate through. With threads, you can have multiple questions asked simultaneously and each one has all their discussion in their respective threads, making it very obvious which messages are meant for which question and making it easier to navigate.

kowbell 5y ago
Forgot to mention: at my job, Slack threads have been super useful. Three or four people can discuss one topic in an open channel (so others can join in and we can search history) without spamming notifications against everyone else. E.g. someone could put a message in #engineering about a bug. All the engineers get that notification so anyone who knows more details can chip in immediately. They then reply in a thread on the original bug message so they can discuss without everyone else getting bothered with irrelevant notifs AND without locking the conversation into a group DM where nobody else can chime in nor can we all easily search for it later if it’s relevant.
- naavis 5y ago
  Exactly, this is how we use it too.
tdeck 5y ago
> If I want to contribute to a prior discussion that happened a few minutes ago but another one is taking place now, then we have two separate conversations in the same linear chat stream. This is also a feature that discourages a bunch of side conversations. If I've participated in conversations on 5 different topics that have moved on, it can sometimes be tiring to have those old threads reopened with more discussions. It's like having 3 text conversations while also being out to dinner with friends.

npunt 5y ago

> discord is a casual discussion app One way to keep that reputation is to not deploy features that enable more professional use cases. Perhaps they want to be more than a casual app? I personally like threads, they are a very minor bump in app complexity that can significantly improve context reassembly - the primary issue with chat apps.

movedx 5y ago
> One way to keep that reputation is to not deploy features that enable more professional use cases. Perhaps they want to be more than a casual app? They do, hence their recent rebranding that resulted in less of a "for gamers" image :)