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Threaded messaging comes to Slack

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Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#51

Post by scrumper »

duderific wrote: post #44
scrumper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, fairly heavy user here and it's basically fine for me, probably because I'm used to it. Simplicity works. Only thing I really wish for is a proper, first class, not-electron desktop app.

Can you elaborate on what you find lacking/problematic in the Electron app? I find very little difference between it and any other proper desktop app. I'm on a 2013 MacBook Pro and I find it works very well.

Performance and resource usage mostly. It's a very, very good example of an Electron app, but it still shows its web flesh in various ways. Some reconnecting issues, incomplete page loads, UX weirdness (minor). Like I said, it's a great example, but that's like praising the beauty of an architectural masterpiece built on sand.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#52

Post by [deleted] »

myowncrapulence wrote: post #50
allover wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despise/tolerate/mess? The basic offering is a simple chat client with 'channels' and an easy signup/invite flow afaict.

Slack is the poor mans IRC. The Dropbox of messaging apps. It's easy but if you want to hide your email from public view or customize anything good luck. Slack is notoriously ignorant to customer requests.

[deleted]

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#53

Post by sfeeney »

lima wrote: post #34
jc4p wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wth this comment a lot. I work at Stack Overflow, where our company chat is split between Slack and an internal chat product we made ourselves years ago. I think the "comments as threads" concept helps solve some specific use cases (like room clutter) but not the use cases I personally care about the most. The "in-line method" mentioned in this other article about the change is my preferred method: https://ww…

> I want better chat tools centered around making our async communication flow better. Try Zulip, actually. We use it and it does that exact thing very well.

Any ldap or ad integration?

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#54

Post by allover »

myowncrapulence wrote: post #50
allover wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despise/tolerate/mess? The basic offering is a simple chat client with 'channels' and an easy signup/invite flow afaict.

Slack is the poor mans IRC. The Dropbox of messaging apps. It's easy but if you want to hide your email from public view or customize anything good luck. Slack is notoriously ignorant to customer requests.

What exactly is your complaint?

> Poor man's IRC

What does that mean, fewer features? It's vastly more accessible and the UI easily beats the experience of navigating/selecting/using IRC clients.

> The Dropbox of messaging apps

I don't know what that means. Dropbox is massively successful for 'just working'.

> It's easy but if you want to hide your email from public view or customize anything good luck.

Okay that's new to me, could be an issue. Can you elaborate?

> Slack is notoriously ignorant to customer requests.

Evidence/context?

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#55

Post by baddox »

okdana wrote: post #48
nkantar wrote: post #30

Is this really more important than some rather basic messaging principles Slack is still ignoring? - No way to ignore/mute users. Yes, I sometimes need to do that even on my team. - Group DMs inherit notification preferences of channels instead of DMs. - No visual distinction between "/me says hi" and "_says hi_". (OK, may be minor, but as a long-time IRC user it's quite annoying.) I can't wait for this threading to…

Some other basic issues i have with Slack: * Spell-checking is semi-broken on macOS when you have more than one system language specified. * A few months ago they broke the holding-Shift thing when uploading files. * The fake Markdown is awful. Aside from the fact that the syntax is just close enough to actual Markdown to be confusing — and i realise that's probably not something they'll ever fix, due to inertia if n…

Well good, at least the Shift upload thing isn't just me. That's been frustrating.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#56

Post by kodablah »

tabbott wrote: post #4

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the problem of how to make threading work as the lead developer of Zulip, an open source group chat application where every conversation is threaded, and I think adding Facebook-style comment threads to messages is the wrong approach. Fundamentally, what you want is to be able to read and participate in multiple conversations with a given group of people (a channel) at the same…

I too have spent a lot of time thinking about this problem space. I find that there is not a big problem in context switching from one conversation to the next, but rather in the UI and appearance of the switch.

The ultimate key is unread message support. By using a single key/approach to jump from one unread message to the next (or mark all messages in a thread as read) in order of oldest unread message, then the rest of messages in that thread, then next oldest unread message, etc, you can make conversation switching easy. It just needs to be clear when you have switched conversations. I hate manually navigating from one channel/room/whatever to the next myself.

Also, I think chat and threading essentially conflict. Threading encourages more thought about who you are replying to and how and is less of a stream of consciousness like chat. In threaded conversational modes, I think the chat-like mode should be reduced (e.g. "X is typing", update exactly when completed, auto scroll the screen) and semi-live-update forum-like mode should be enhanced (e.g. a post is fixed in space, no auto scroll, live updates are batched/debounced over at least 2 seconds, etc).

Of course, the real answer might be extreme configurability. Any communication system can be like any other with enough configuration options. While default sets may be preferred for chat, forum, microblogging, etc, many people configure "rooms" more than they configure lots of other types of software so there is little "option overload".

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#57

Post by catern »

sfeeney wrote: post #53
lima wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want better chat tools centered around making our async communication flow better. Try Zulip, actually. We use it and it does that exact thing very well.

Any ldap or ad integration?

It would be quite amusing if it couldn't work with AD, considering Zulip is based on Zephyr which is a very old chat protocol/application heavily dependent on Kerberos.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#58

Post by truebosko »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #5

I really think one of the things that Flowdock nailed was their threading implementation - it took a little bit of getting used to, but not much, and allowed contextual conversation without feeling like the conversation was buried in a thread somewhere (as this implementation does). For people interested in the thread, you could focus on just that, but for everyone else, it just acted like a normal chat room. Conside…

Never heard of Flowdock but it sounds very compelling. We're currently looking to get our enterprise on Slack and the costs seem .. unreasonable, and I feel that's because Slack is the top player in the game and can ask for such pricing.

Hmm.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#59

Post by codinghorror »

kodablah wrote: post #56
tabbott wrote: post #4

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the problem of how to make threading work as the lead developer of Zulip, an open source group chat application where every conversation is threaded, and I think adding Facebook-style comment threads to messages is the wrong approach. Fundamentally, what you want is to be able to read and participate in multiple conversations with a given group of people (a channel) at the same…

I too have spent a lot of time thinking about this problem space. I find that there is not a big problem in context switching from one conversation to the next, but rather in the UI and appearance of the switch. The ultimate key is unread message support. By using a single key/approach to jump from one unread message to the next (or mark all messages in a thread as read) in order of oldest unread message, then the re…

I agree with this. Chat and threading are oil and water to some degree. To me it is the difference between short term and long term memory; in short term memory, forgetting is a feature -- not a design problem to be solved.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#60

Post by graphememes »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #5

I really think one of the things that Flowdock nailed was their threading implementation - it took a little bit of getting used to, but not much, and allowed contextual conversation without feeling like the conversation was buried in a thread somewhere (as this implementation does). For people interested in the thread, you could focus on just that, but for everyone else, it just acted like a normal chat room. Conside…

Yep, flowdocks implementation of this feature blows the slack variant out of the water and into space. I seriously wish companies would go back to flowdock.
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