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Threaded messaging comes to Slack

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Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#61

Post by Mtinie »

tabbott wrote: post #43
Eridrus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Flowdock? You've described pretty much their exact approach to threading, which I think is the right one. The biggest downside I've found is some people always forget to use the threading feature and comments fall out of the thread. [EDIT]: I just had a look at Slack's implementation and I think it has some pretty cool ideas. I think being able to follow an individual thread at a high level is useful.…

Yep, I have. It's pretty different from Zulip. Zulip's threading model is much more like a lightweight version of email threading -- when you start a new thread, you pick a short topic for it, and then after that people just reply to the thread.

Not exactly the same, but you may find a product I worked on a few years back, www.kona.com, to be of academic interest as someone who is looking at different communication methods.

We used a similar "topic" method and allowed users to fork conversations to have the best of both worlds -- linear chat for most cases and topical chat when a breakout was needed.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#62

Post by tmail21 »

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 also agree that adding Facebook-style commenting is not the best approach. It has the virtue however of reducing clutter in a Slack channel (a laudable goal), but represents a missed opportunity in my opinion.

Organizing work around a thread-first approach opens the door to many interesting possibilities. Zulip is cool and does a better job than Slack at threading. However, it just scratches the tip of the iceberg as to what can be done with a Thread-first approach.

This blog article captures my thoughts on Slack threads: https://tmail21.com/blog/slack-threads-a-missed-opportunity/

Disclaimer: I am the CEO of the TMail21

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#63

Post by tabbott »

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?

Yep, see http://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/prod-authentication-me...

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#64

Post by viraptor »

VA3FXP wrote: post #26

So what do you get when you put IRC and Usenet into a blender? A mess. If my memory serves me correctly, isn't this part of what Google Wave was offering? My company uses slack. I despised it at first, I tolerate it now. I suspect that we are not using it to it's full potential either.

To some extent, yes, it was. I used it for uni projects and remember enjoying the idea a lot. It's the the implementation that was terrible. (Mainly due to performance)

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#65

Post by maknz »

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…

Flowdock was great until CA bought it. Now it's pretty much on life support. No support (it's all 'community' now, whatever that means), buggy as heck, no updates in years, the Twitter account is dead.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#67

Post by pfarnsworth »

What I want more is columns in Slack so I can see conversations in multiple rooms without having to click back and forth on them whenever a new message pops up. It's annoying that I can only see one at one time when I have so much screen space.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#68

Post by ak217 »

Came here to mention Flowdock. IMO Flowdock nailed the chat UI layout for modern chat systems with API-driven integrations. It's too bad it hasn't seen wider adoption, since its bigger competitors, especially Slack, still have no clue how to fix the noise and focus problems.

Flowdock introduced three killer features that I still haven't seen properly matched by anyone else:

- It introduced threading. (Why we're here)

- It introduced a seamless, intuitive way to switch between the unfiltered channel and a single thread (or to start a thread), by clicking on the colored bubbles next to each message.

- It separated bots from humans (inbox vs chat), making it very easy to have or follow a high value conversation without being interrupted or distracted by a stream of bot announcements.

I think Slack has a lot to learn from Flowdock. I miss Flowdock dearly now that Slack is the de facto standard that everyone uses.

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#69

Post by it33 »

krn1p4n1c wrote: post #66

IIRC mattermost added this in v3.3.0.

Mattermost team here, thanks for the mention!

Mattermost had threaded messaging since 2015, it used to be called "Replies" and we renamed it "Threaded messages" in April 2016: https://about.mattermost.com/mattermost-3-4-7/

If anyone wants to try it out, you can join https://demo.mattermost.com/

Mattermost is an open source, private cloud Slack-alternative.

We're "Slack-compatible, not Slack limited" and you'll find all the core features of Slack plus many benefits added by the open source community--like markdown support, translation into 11 languages, multi-team accounts, searchable hashtags and much more: https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from-its-o...

Re: Threaded messaging comes to Slack

#70

Post by brazzledazzle »

maknz wrote: post #65
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…

Flowdock was great until CA bought it. Now it's pretty much on life support. No support (it's all 'community' now, whatever that means), buggy as heck, no updates in years, the Twitter account is dead.

CA makes me wonder if they have a strategy in mind for acquisitions or if the plan is to put them on life support collecting fees from customers too invested to switch.
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