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Comment by alanfranz | Hacker News Reader

I think threading in chat apps is a terrible idea. It’s a way to merge email and chat, but chat apps like Slack aren’t really suited for such replacement imho.

Why threading if there’s not much noise? And if the noise is too much, maybe a public chat is not the best idea.

on Slack, navigating a channel between “main” messages and thread messages is a nightmare, and since “main” messages are not just a subject, you spend a lot of time just reading the message.

We need something to improve email experience (where you need forwards, setting up mailing lists is slow, can’t delete/edit, etc) without resorting to a chat app for everything. A better forum-like/nntp, not a better irc.

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I don't really see the issue with it. In Slack, we have a channel for our team. In that channel we have conversations, often more than one at a time, spread out over minutes to days. Why shouldn't each conversation have its own separate thread?

The only real problem(s) I have with threads in Slack are:

1. some people suck at remembering to reply in thread. This isn't too serious though, once there's more than 2 messages in the thread most people catch on

2. Slack kind of sucks at notifying you about threads. You mostly have to know to look in the "Threads" thing on the side and not rely on notifications.

Neither of those are that serious or even that intrinsic to threads in chat apps in general.

I totally agree here. At the beginning I disliked Slack threads. But apart from the notification issue, I think the advantages of having a more focussed discussion where everything can be found in one place outweighs the disadvantages.

Finding is the problem. Searching for stuff in slack is maddening.

Yup, I'm enough of a fan that I wish there was a UI option to steer people away from making new top level posts, like a kind of “tick this box to confirm your post is a new subject and not a reply to an existing subject.” And maybe better tools for channel moderators to move accidental top level posts into being replies instead.

Also, Slack's thread UI is terrible. If you click on a thread inside the main chat, you get this side bar, but only one thread at a time, and no way to get the same from anywhere else (e.g. from the threads notification/overview page).

Why would you use a chat app for conversations spreading over days?

why would you knowingly fragment information when you have the option not to?

Why not?

Do you usually randomly chat about a topic with multiple people over the course of days, without writing down points and/or making a gist?

Over days, yes. Without writing down notes? No. I write notes and you can throw them in slack if they're sharable. I don't really see the issue.

Can you remember what messages you’ve read and which you haven’t, from which conversations, over the course of days or weeks?

There are times when a conversation that’s important to some participants spontaneously starts in chat and it’s too disruptive to ask less interested (but important) participants to “move it to email.” Suggesting that might cause the conversation to fizzle out which the more interested parties can’t afford.

Threads are a stopgap measure. But the problem is using a chat app for extended-scope conversations.

We don’t have a good way to switch from chats to more forum-like conversations, and email is perceived as too complex (and has other issues in current implementations)

Threading makes channels far less noisy for me. Especially the larger the channel is. When is just a few people I don't need threads. But >3 they are great and help organize. The greatest thing about them is also that you don't have to use them!

Slack itself has a large amount of issues beyond this. Notifications (ringing my phone hours after I answered a message or not notifying me at all). Not dropping you into threads for notifications and many other things.

Don't conflate a bad implementation with a bad idea. Slack's threads suck, Zulip's threads are amazing and I wouldn't have it any other way.

The underlying issue to me is the different velocity of different conversations between the same people in a room. Conversation 1 can be fast, with short messages and informal, Conversation 2 can be slow, with long technical messages or attached files. And all in between.

Sometimes one type of convo transforms into another. And the tool should reframe it so: either by providing a schism for a new thread, changing the topic of the thread, or so.

This is something that tools with N-level threads, where each message creates a new thread (technical email discussions with top posting) do very well. I wish that each message would create a new thread. And that the UX allowed to me pivot from short and informal to long and thought out messages easily.

From an informal conversation of the daily, to starting a thread from a message, where we discuss a technical implementation in a long comment. And then back to someone opening an informal thread starting from a phrase of that long comment (ala document reviews).

Wow, these chat apps are just badly reinventing ticket queues/forums but with a focus on real time communication.

That’s my point.

I find slack terrible for long technical conversations. The ui is too slow, the windows are too small, they’re hard to search.

Threads are an absolute must to keep the noise down and conversation relevant - at least in working environments when using apps like Slack.

Not everyone has strict communication protocols or enjoys communicating succinctly, it's easier just to have one rule - start your convos as a thread.

I would say it depends on the implementation. Slack is pretty horrible, but Zulip is the best thing ever.

They're not even the same thing. The only real similarity is that they share a name.

Slack threads are a tangent to a point, an aside to something said in the main timeline. Zulip threads are like forum threads, a discussion of some particular topic.

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