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Comment by remram | Hacker News Reader

One thing that would probably be welcome is some builtin support for threads.

On the Python discord for example, there is a system of help channels which get assigned to the first person talking in it and returned to the pool after 30min of inactivity or once the problem has been solved. A bot keeps a few channels in a "free" pool, marks some as "occupied", and moves the surplus to a "dormant" section for UX purposes. Newcomers often get confused and ask questions in already-occupied channels, etc.

Bots make this possible but it's never as good as the threading that exists in Slack or Zulip. I'm sure any sizeable organization (like a University) is running into this as well.

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Personally I think threads ruin conversation flow. If you want to have an in-depth conversation about a topic limited to a few people, you should either open up another channel or do a DM. Just my opinion, but I hate Slack threads and love Discord's system.

That is impossible in Discord as up to 250 channels per guild are permitted at a time.

The point is not to break a single conversation into multiple threads, it is to split a single conversation away from the other conversations happening simultaneously in your #help channel. Effectively creating a channel, without having to bug a mod to get a new channel for your 5min conversation.

Slack became a much worse experience when they added full threads IMO. Discord's new approach of allowing you to reply to a specific message, but not outright fork the channel, is a much better compromise.

this - Discord's approach of allowing you to reply, but having the message show up in the regular conversation flow keeps the feel of an actual conversation.

Screenshot of a reply: https://support.discord.com/hc/article_attachments/360099599... (from https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057382374-R...)

You are assuming that the traffic is low enough that "a single conversation flow" is happening, or (like in your example) that multiple people reply to a single post.

If you have enough people talking past each other, even with the reply feature, it becomes a huge mess. Having a way to only show the messages that are replying to you while you troubleshoot a specific issue is what a thread view enables.

Having just migrated from Zulip to Slack, I find Slack's threading model really bad. Discord is a little better, but still fragmented over time in a busy channel. Zulip has the best implementation I've seen for putting semi-related topics together without getting drowned out.

Surprisingly, Slack's sales seem unaware of Zulip from what I heard from some colleagues so I doubt Slack is going to steal Zulip's (much better) threading model any time soon.

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