Ha, I wish I could disable "threads" so nobody else can use them...
This means that when you browse the channel itself, each individual line represents a conversation on a specific topic. You can essentially browse the "headlines" of the day all in one screen (for most channels), and if you care to hear more about how Bob resolved his problem with those third party build dependencies then you can view the conversation in the subthread.
This also enables folks to opt-in to notifications for channels, if they so desire, without getting overwhelmed with every new message that comes in.
Threads should behave like nested channels. Today, that works okay if you click on the "5 replies" link under a message, though it opens up a cramped sidebar instead of taking you to something that feels "nested".
But when there are multiple threads, the only way to juggle them is that "Threads" entry in the man sidebar. It leads to a weird page that doesn't behave like a regular channel. For one, new messages don't come in automatically; it just shows "1 unread reply" or whatever which has to be clicked. Secondly, if you have multiple threads active at once, the view crams all of them into a single scrollable pane.
Threads should, in my opinion, show up as separate entries in the sidebar. And Slack should support having multiple windows open for separate threads and channels, which would make it easier to have multiple conversations going on at the same time.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1722461&His...
Even if this worked, it's just a nice step toward a full comment tree (like HN or reddit). I get the impression some people find that format confusing, but I think it's vastly superior. I assume programmers generally prefer it.
How would HN or reddit look like if every reply to a post also had a single level nested thread that actually consisted of multiple subthreads of conversations with everything at the same level of nesting? It would be much more difficult to follow different subtopics of interest since it would be impossible to filter out posts that aren't pertinent to it.
I don't know how I'd feel about all channels being this way (since visibility and notification control are much weaker in this format) but for time limited discussions that may warrant revisiting it's quite helpful.
Our slack channels have at most a dozen active members and my channel list has approximately a dozen channels with permutations of the same dozen people organized topically. I have turned off almost all notifications as they are so ridiculous and look at the sidebar once in a while to see which channels are active.
I consider slack content ephemeral, even if slack disagrees. If I want to track issues, I use an issue tracker. If I want a threaded conversation, I'd probably write an email still. If I want to find content, I search a wiki or an email archive.
My preference for threads is as appears in my old school mail client or my fading memories of the "trn" threaded news reader for usenet. Threads do not hide messages, they only reorder them into a hierarchical index. It is easy to move back up the index to skim prior content in the tree, but it is also trivial to press a key and jump to the next unread message sorted first by thread and next by message time (to break ties or decide which thread to visit next after exhausting one).
Recently I had the absurd situation of someone using threaded replies in a direct message channel. It was astounding to me that this person thought this was a good idea, and also that the slack UX could so completely obfuscate an attempt at communication...
My colleagues and I sometimes discuss far-ranging topics in temporal proximity. While in the heat of the chat I can keep replies straight in my head, it helps to have them grouped for later review; furthermore, they reduce the need for segues in and out of conversational contexts, which I find incredibly liberating.
Otherwise I think dedicated team interaction channels are the biggest of ours and we try and keep those pretty small still.