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Regarding threading generally: perhaps it's just me and my Usenet habits, but I find threads really helpful in keeping a chat channel relatively 'clean'. Howev

Regarding threading generally: perhaps it's just me and my Usenet habits, but I find threads really helpful in keeping a chat channel relatively 'clean'. However trying to get conversations to actually occur in them seems to be an uphill battle with other (non-techy?) people, and often things 'degenerate' into a stream-of-consciousness series of messages. Is it just that I'm atypical in preferring them? Do 'normal' people have a hard time with (understanding) them? Other?

tfehring 5y ago
For better or worse, I think Slack’s approach of opt-in threading is effectively the default at this point. If users’ (technical or otherwise) mental model assumes that messages can get sent to a channel, but the software only allows messages to be sent to a thread, that disconnect could result in lots of unexpected behaviors. For what it’s worth, I personally prefer Slack’s approach over Zulip’s - I think threading is a really important feature, but requiring it for every message creates excessive and unnecessary friction.
- conradludgate 5y ago
  I think if you could type a message, and it could use some heuristic to determine a sensible thread title for you automatically, that would improve the experience quite a bit
  - tfehring 5y ago
    Yeah, I think that would help a lot. I think I’d personally go a step further and make thread titles optional, I generally don’t think they add much value over just reading the first message in the thread. Even with that change, though, I’d still rather have threading be opt-in. Not every message fits well into exactly one thread.
- gilbertbw 5y ago
  Personally I’ve found the ability to move messages between / split threads (topics) helps a lot with this in Zulip. We moved from Slack, and those that struggled with threading there mostly picked it up over a few weeks.
ChasingEchoes 5y ago
Dont know about others, but at my $Corp its the other way around. Business keeps pushing and making various channels and threads and stuff in Teams They're basically doa. Maybe they'll see a bit of traffic when they are made and like 1 day after, but otherwise they're almost immediately abandoned. One of our architects posted a diagram in the Files tab in a specific teams channel. 2-3 people actually looked and downloaded it. Everyone else got it when it was posted as an attachment to the group chat we were having. Most people just gravitate to direct messages, myself included. Its not that threads/channels are hard to understand. Its simply that most people cant be arsed to use them and have no interest in following different topics/channels/threads for what they want, thats why even they do use Teams / Threads / w.e (worked with a client that did), you'll have _a lot_ of duplicate threads ... people would rather make a new one that search for whats there.

tfehring 5y ago

For better or worse, I think Slack’s approach of opt-in threading is effectively the default at this point. If users’ (technical or otherwise) mental model assumes that messages can get sent to a channel, but the software only allows messages to be sent to a thread, that disconnect could result in lots of unexpected behaviors. For what it’s worth, I personally prefer Slack’s approach over Zulip’s - I think threading is a really important feature, but requiring it for every message creates excessive and unnecessary friction.

conradludgate 5y ago
I think if you could type a message, and it could use some heuristic to determine a sensible thread title for you automatically, that would improve the experience quite a bit
- tfehring 5y ago
  Yeah, I think that would help a lot. I think I’d personally go a step further and make thread titles optional, I generally don’t think they add much value over just reading the first message in the thread. Even with that change, though, I’d still rather have threading be opt-in. Not every message fits well into exactly one thread.
gilbertbw 5y ago
Personally I’ve found the ability to move messages between / split threads (topics) helps a lot with this in Zulip. We moved from Slack, and those that struggled with threading there mostly picked it up over a few weeks.

ChasingEchoes 5y ago

Dont know about others, but at my $Corp its the other way around. Business keeps pushing and making various channels and threads and stuff in Teams They're basically doa. Maybe they'll see a bit of traffic when they are made and like 1 day after, but otherwise they're almost immediately abandoned. One of our architects posted a diagram in the Files tab in a specific teams channel. 2-3 people actually looked and downloaded it. Everyone else got it when it was posted as an attachment to the group chat we were having. Most people just gravitate to direct messages, myself included. Its not that threads/channels are hard to understand. Its simply that most people cant be arsed to use them and have no interest in following different topics/channels/threads for what they want, thats why even they do use Teams / Threads / w.e (worked with a client that did), you'll have _a lot_ of duplicate threads ... people would rather make a new one that search for whats there.