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Discord Launches Threads

blog.discord.com

61–70 of 233 posts

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#61

Threads are great for helping you to actively ignore a discussion, but discord is a casual discussion app. Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying. Channels are used to group conversation topics that some people might want to ignore. I’d rather not have threads

> Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying

I’m of the completely opposite opinion.

If I want to contribute to a prior discussion that happened a few minutes ago but another one is taking place now, then we have two separate conversations in the same linear chat stream. With a thread, I can respond to who I want without interrupting anyone else. Without threads, you’re reading through all the messages and trying to figure out which are relevant.

Most of the Discords I’m in are game or mod related, and I’m often using their help/questions channels. There’s usually only one or two of these channels, so if multiple people need help at the same time you get scattered conversations and it’s confusing to follow, especially if you step away for a second.

Direct replies to the messages help but they still exist in that linear main chat stream, so there’s still a lot of clutter that everyone has to navigate through. With threads, you can have multiple questions asked simultaneously and each one has all their discussion in their respective threads, making it very obvious which messages are meant for which question and making it easier to navigate.

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#62
post #6

Is there really no better design for "aside" conversations than this? People lean on Slack threads too much, leading to a confused flow of conversation that makes it extremely difficult to piece together how the discussion was ended or resolved.

I love having threads on Slack, but I absolutely hate that it always open in the right corner, instead of showing in the center. I always have to drag the border all the way to the left so it's not just a small column on the side

I genuinely hadn't realised you could resize threads to be wider and found it really annoying how narrow they were. I don't think I'd noticed any visual cues you could resize them either (assuming the cues exist).

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#63

These look like a weird mix of Slack threads (temporary (though not enforced in Slack), written in sidebar) and Zulip threads/topics (named, available in the channel list), though... with downsides compared to both (for example, you can't forward messages to original channel like you could on Slack). Feels a bit awkward, but time will tell. My main concern right now is with discoverability and moderation - it seems a…

Given they show up in the channel list as "sub-channels", discoverability and moderation should be straight forward and this blog post devotes an entire section to Moderation tools, so I'm cautiously optimistic on that part at least. (Especially in comparisons to Slack's Thread moderation which was rough in what little I tried to do of it.)

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is after Slack's market share and offering threads makes sense in many contexts where the discussion isn't casual.

Man, I wish Slack would implement Discords "reply" feature that automatically quotes the post and @mentions the poster.

I think it has it, it's just called something else.

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#65
post #61

Threads are great for helping you to actively ignore a discussion, but discord is a casual discussion app. Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying. Channels are used to group conversation topics that some people might want to ignore. I’d rather not have threads

> Threads make it harder and weirder for people to chime in halfway through or to catch up on what people have been saying I’m of the completely opposite opinion. If I want to contribute to a prior discussion that happened a few minutes ago but another one is taking place now, then we have two separate conversations in the same linear chat stream. With a thread, I can respond to who I want without interrupting anyone…

Forgot to mention: at my job, Slack threads have been super useful. Three or four people can discuss one topic in an open channel (so others can join in and we can search history) without spamming notifications against everyone else.

E.g. someone could put a message in #engineering about a bug. All the engineers get that notification so anyone who knows more details can chip in immediately. They then reply in a thread on the original bug message so they can discuss without everyone else getting bothered with irrelevant notifs AND without locking the conversation into a group DM where nobody else can chime in nor can we all easily search for it later if it’s relevant.

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#66
The admin tools available at launch seem quite robust: - Enabling/disabling threads on a per-channel basis - Enabling the creation of threads only for specified users/roles - Administrative locking/unlocking of threads - Automatic archiving

So one could setup a server with a mixture of threaded conversation and more IRC-like chat.

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is after Slack's market share and offering threads makes sense in many contexts where the discussion isn't casual.

Man, I wish Slack would implement Discords "reply" feature that automatically quotes the post and @mentions the poster.

Man, I wish Discord would let you set it to not @mention by default.

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#69

These look like a weird mix of Slack threads (temporary (though not enforced in Slack), written in sidebar) and Zulip threads/topics (named, available in the channel list), though... with downsides compared to both (for example, you can't forward messages to original channel like you could on Slack). Feels a bit awkward, but time will tell. My main concern right now is with discoverability and moderation - it seems a…

As a Discord moderator (discord.gg/wilbur, 310k+) who's used Threads for a few months now while testing, there's a specific Threads button that lists all open threads - even private ones, although behind a toggle - and that works pretty okay. Most large servers only use Threads internally within staff teams, not in the wider general channels yet, though!

Re: Discord Launches Threads

#70
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of threads is something that made me not use Discord before (before they had the replies). There was simply no way to know who someone is replying to, or part of which of the multiple conversations in the channel is that message a part of

That's because it was designed to be a real time chat. When you're having a group conversation, there are no threads. You just keep track in your head what the topics are and who said them and then figure out how the next sentence applies. Discord was modeled after this interaction (and IRC, which was modeled after this interaction).

In IRL chat you have physical modifiers to indicate threading though (volume, posture, gaze).

Seems like threading but with a UI option to collapse to a flat presentation suits both sides?

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