[HN Gopher] Introducing Threads in Beta
___________________________________________________________________
Introducing Threads in Beta
Author : unicornporn
Score : 166 points
Date : 2022-04-23 07:53 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (element.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (element.io)
| brunoqc wrote:
| Are there still plans for Zulip-style threads?
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/232...
| Arathorn wrote:
| Yes. The plan is for Matrix to support both arbitrarily deep
| threading (like https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-
| cerulean does) - as well as Slack/Discord style threading. They
| have very different semantics; we added Slack style threading
| to Element first for familiarity and bridging with Slack, but I
| can't wait for fully branchy threads to be in production too
| for bridging to Zulip (or HN ;P)
| ashton314 wrote:
| +1 for a HN bridge
| [deleted]
| alanfranz wrote:
| 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.
| viccuad wrote:
| 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).
| imtringued wrote:
| Wow, these chat apps are just badly reinventing ticket
| queues/forums but with a focus on real time communication.
| alanfranz wrote:
| That's my point.
| alanfranz wrote:
| I find slack terrible for long technical conversations. The
| ui is too slow, the windows are too small, they're hard to
| search.
| matklad wrote:
| I would say it depends on the implementation. Slack is pretty
| horrible, but Zulip is the best thing ever.
| feanaro wrote:
| 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.
| kadoban wrote:
| 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.
| m3adow wrote:
| 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.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Finding is the problem. Searching for stuff in slack is
| maddening.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| 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.
| blauditore wrote:
| 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).
| alanfranz wrote:
| Why would you use a chat app for conversations spreading over
| days?
| replygirl wrote:
| why would you knowingly fragment information when you have
| the option not to?
| kadoban wrote:
| Why not?
| godelski wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| 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.
| smcleod wrote:
| 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.
| dmitriid wrote:
| None of these "innovative chats" that already use a browser to
| display them can even come up with the idea of _tabs_.
|
| Nope, they all insist on keeping everything inside a single
| window. So even if you have thread "for better communication with
| no noise", it still gets lost in all other threads, and they come
| up with workarounds like a dedicated page for threads etc.
|
| Just give me tabs, damnit.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't think your desire for tabbed windows is shared among
| the general public, to be honest; we've seen a trend away from
| early 2000s separate windows to full screen "experiences" and
| the general public doesn't seem to mind. This could be because
| all native applications have been simplified down to laggy web
| UIs designed for toddlers, but even in the typical nerd spaces
| the old stack of hierarchies has disappeared.
|
| For what it's worth, Thunderbird is getting Matrix support and
| with its age come some of the old-fashioned design choices that
| might just end up giving you your tabs.
|
| If all else fails, I'm afraid you're going to need to get
| enough people together to make your own chat UI. Maybe fork
| some open source messenger and show the world the advantages
| you're describing, because I don't think many people get the
| benefits.
|
| That said, Element is very much not an innovative chat client.
| The federation protocol is what's innovative, the clients range
| from what look like modified IRC chats to Discord clones. The
| only areas where Matrix clients are innovative is where they're
| not being used to chat, as Matrix isn't exclusively a chat
| protocol.
| kadoban wrote:
| Nothing does stop you from having multiple browser tabs open
| for Element. It is kind of wasteful and awkward though. I agree
| that this would be useful, though getting to ux nice might be
| challenging.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It is kind of wasteful and awkward though.
|
| It's not. If you have several conversations going on at the
| same time, what's awkward is having to switch between them in
| the same window.
| [deleted]
| barnabee wrote:
| Absolutely. I miss having multiple windows, each with one or
| more tabs, all respectful of my screen real estate!
|
| With most IRC clients or multi protocol chat programs you could
| have a couple of important channels always visible on a second
| monitor, key people you DM a lot in a tabbed window somewhere
| prominent, active chats open next to your work, and everything
| else in the main app window, minimised.
|
| Now we have a website (wrapped in an app, if we're lucky) with
| next to no layout control. It's nothing short of a disastrous
| step backwards.
|
| I'm convinced the recent resurgence of the terminal is partly
| due to the complete abandonment of GUI applications for most
| forms of professional computing.
|
| We desperately need a new framework for applications:
|
| - offline first
|
| - local first
|
| - data first
|
| - standardised types and APIs
|
| - as composable as the terminal
|
| - standard controls across all apps
|
| - standard window and document model
|
| - web views considered harmful
|
| - UX and "customer journey" designers considered worse
|
| We were nearly there, then "web 2.0" happened
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Yeah as kadoban says, Matrix has no such restriction only
| Element does. You can do exactly what you're talking about
| above with other clients.
| [deleted]
| kadoban wrote:
| > Now we have a website (wrapped in an app, if we're lucky)
| with next to no layout control. It's nothing short of a
| disastrous step backwards.
|
| This is true of Element, but you can have a Matrix client
| with any form you like. There already exist several. So it's
| not the most compelling criticism here IMO, because those who
| are using Element have chosen it over other options.
| barnabee wrote:
| This is a fair point.
|
| I still feel that my criticism applies to where the money
| and development effort seem to be focused, even for Matrix,
| but I am a big fan of Matrix overall and agree that it does
| at least have a variety of better clients.
|
| It'd be great to see every Slack replaced with a Matrix
| server for sure.
| 12baad4db82 wrote:
| I'm not sure I completely follow, aren't tabs still within the
| same window? How would tabs solve the 'keeping everything
| inside a single window' problem?
|
| Is the conversation list on the left side of the window not
| analogous to tabs? A conversation can be pinned there which
| would be providing the same experience as keeping a
| conversation open in a tab.
| dmitriid wrote:
| You can open threads and windows in separate tabs, and switch
| between them without losing where they are and having to
| search for them
| kgeist wrote:
| We use Rocket Chat and it's even worse than that. The entire
| channel is marked as "there're new messages" but you have no
| idea which one of the threads has new messages so you have to
| look through all of them. Good luck if it's some old thread
| from weeks ago. Or maybe there's some option in the UI to
| quickly find it but I'm not aware of such.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| How's managed (not self-hosted) Element/Matrix for E2E these
| days? I want to give it a shot but i regularly use Signal for
| secure communication (financial stuff/etc), so the E2E impl has
| to be on-par with Signal. Thoughts?
| godelski wrote:
| How do you all find element channels. I'm interested in trying
| matrix but I also haven't really found channels I'm that
| interested in.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Each home server has a room directory. You can rooms in your
| client (top left in Element, I believe) or you can try browsing
| this list: https://view.matrix.org/
| stevenicr wrote:
| I really want to make a matrix servers not listed there
| list.. but I suppose it would have to be broken up into
| different pages and hosted in different parts of the world
| for different issues.
|
| I have an open to the public (adult public) matrix server
| that will never make it on that list - and federation is
| turned off so it wouldn't show up in the rooms lists or
| whatever of any of those also.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| Threads is the worst feature of Slack, it required 5x mental
| space to keep track of all hidden conversations, as mentioned
| before Tabs would've been a much better solution
| olah_1 wrote:
| There needs to be a way for rooms to communicate to clients which
| features they support.
|
| I need to be able to make a room without threads (DMs, small
| group chats, etc). And clients should be able to see which
| features are enabled in each room and support them appropriately.
|
| That is what a universal protocol would allow for.
| ksala_ wrote:
| Threads are probably a good idea, but as many people have pointed
| out I still have to find an app that have a good implementation
| of them. Most of my experience is with Slack so maybe Twist/Zulip
| are better at this.
|
| * I hate threads in direct messages. Please, Slack, just give
| people a nice way to quote messages instead - which in my
| experience is mostly what people want. Right now it's a mix of
| copying a message and adding ">", sending a message as a thread
| with the "also post in the channel" flag or sharing the message
| and adding your reply there. I've had persons randomly pick one
| of my messages and then start a thread on top of that in direct
| messages, loosing context, but I'm not going to blame slack for
| that (but still, give me a way to disable threads there!)
|
| * They work great in big channels (hundreds or thousands of
| people - think channels like #rust-interest or similar), but then
| inevitably someone will reply outside of the thread, triggering
| other people to comment "reply in the thread" (modern "don't
| reply to this email!" in a reply all) or react with that damned
| thread emoji. A channel should have some way to "enforce"
| conversation by thread - offer tooling to move messages in
| threads and split threads, and make it slightly harder to
| accidentally post outside of a thread (maybe a different button,
| a confirmation message, or enforcing some style in the message.
| I'm sure nothing will 100% work after seeing people use @here and
| @channel and completely ignoring all the warnings, but still).
|
| * They are... meh in medium channels (team sized ones, thing 5 to
| 20 people), mostly because it's a pick and mix of people that
| want to use them and people that ignore them. This would at least
| improve if we had tooling to merge and slice threads, so that
| someone could at least try to enforce a style. But also from my
| experience it doesn't really matter too much, because not a lot
| of conversations will be happening there at the same time.
|
| * Thread discoverability sucks, you get notifications but then
| they're tucked in a single "thread" pane. That should be
| collapsable and show your recent threads, with individual
| notifications.
|
| * Using threads sucks too, you can either open one and lose
| context on everything else, or open one in a small sidebar, where
| posting more than 3 lines of code will fill it up and it's
| completely unreadable anyway. Having tabs or opening the thread
| in-line would be so much better.
|
| /rant
| culi wrote:
| Zulip has been my personal favorite for the way threads are
| handled. But that's because it centers them and ends up
| avoiding everything people hate about the thread/channel hybrid
| systems
| viccuad wrote:
| 1-level threads is not enough. You fork a thread for a new topic,
| and users can keep derailing the topic with tangents inside of
| that thread.
|
| The traditional chat client expects the convention of users going
| back to the main room to create a completely separate thread.
|
| There's other ways. Example, technical email discussions
| (convention: bottom posting, with good mail client with
| threading). Or reddit/HN. On email, each message automatically
| creates a new thread, and you can ignore threads that aren't
| interesting to you. But sadly, the convention is not enforced
| centrally through the client as everyone has their own. You need
| a tight culture for it to work.
|
| I wish I had the convention enforced centrally (everyone using
| chat clients that behave roughly the same), yet have every
| message create a thread (so tangent to topics can live on their
| own, or be ignored). Or at minimum, 1-threads with titles (ala
| Streams (rooms) and Topics(threads) of Zulip), so people stick to
| the topic.
| XorNot wrote:
| Maybe rapid ejection for new threads? i.e. single level
| threading, with a UI that makes it easy to range select a bunch
| of messages and eject them into their own thread topic?
|
| Of course at some point this becomes a management problem: if
| no one's taking the lead and given the authority to enforce
| this, then no one will. Arguably a lot of companies are big
| enough that technically someone should be employed as a "forum
| moderator" for online discussion spaces anyway.
| Yaina wrote:
| This is really cool. I love threads, especially in larger
| channels!
|
| If there are no threads everyone just has to patiently wait in
| line, when there is one conversation going on.
| ravenstine wrote:
| What are people using Element for? I know that Element is a chat
| app... I actually have it installed. But it's not for work or
| anything. I thought it could be a cool replacement for Discord.
|
| Nobody seems to be talking about anything on Element. There are
| plenty of Element rooms (or whatever they're called), but no
| matter how many of them I check out, they're all dead silent.
| There can be hundreds or thousands of joined users and I hear
| crickets. As a platform for socialization, I've found it pretty
| much useless. Am I doin' it wrong?
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| Most people I know who host a Matrix homeserver run it in
| closed federations or completely unfederated, out of concerns
| for people joining larger rooms and flooding the poor budget
| server.
| kvark wrote:
| Most of the discussions on Rust graphics stack around wgpu
| (WebGPU implementation) happen on the Matrix protocol. There
| you can find our official rooms for communication both intra
| within developers and extra with community. It's been working
| very well for us, and I'm quite excited to finally have
| threads.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Not sure what you are talking about. Those Open-Source projects
| that use Matrix as a official chat are as active as any other
| open-source project rooms.
| tjader wrote:
| I run my own homeserver and bridges for IRC, WhatsApp,
| Telegram, Google Chat and Discord, so that I can access all my
| chats in a single place instead of several separate
| apps/browser tabs.
| sandstrom wrote:
| What I'd prefer is the Twist-style threads (Zulip may also have
| them), where every room/channel must contain only topics/threads,
| and those topics have a title/description, and any messages in
| them are 1-level (no nested threading).
|
| It looks like this: #office [room/channel]
| * Lunch [thread/topic] - Anyone wants to grab lunch
| today? [message] - Sure, I'll join! [message]
| - Me too! [message] * Printer doesn't work
| [thread/topic] - Anyone else having trouble with the
| printer? [message] - I fixed it an hour ago
| actually, try again [message] - Thanks, it works!
| [message] - (thread closed) #marketing
| [room/channel] * Website Update 2022 [thread/topic]
| - (posting images) [message] - Here is the new
| draft, let me know what you think! [message] - Looks
| good, but there are some spelling mistakes... [message]
| - Nice work! [message] - Adwords Campaign
| [thread/topic] - Here is a new adwords campaign
| structure. Let me know what you think! [message] -
| How about splitting by geografy and demographics? [message]
| - ... [message] - ... [message] -
| Alright, new campaign is live, thanks everyone! [message]
| - (thread closed)
|
| We recently switched from Slack to Twist because they have this
| structure. Although Twist is worse in probably every dimension
| except for this, this structure is still so much better that
| we're overall happy with the move.
|
| I wish Element/Matrix would support this. I suggested this during
| their RFC process, but unfortunately didn't capture enough
| attention. Perhaps it'll be added later.
| Arathorn wrote:
| The hope is to add it later. The first cut is plain Slack-style
| threads, but we have MSCs for zulip/twist style threads like
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/283...
| which will get built out as soon as we can.
|
| Fun fact: the design for Element's current threading is from a
| former Twist designer; make of that what you will :)
| culi wrote:
| Does Element have discord-style replies? This is the biggest
| feature missing in slack for me. Being able to quickly reply
| to a particular message that might be 2-3 messages behind
| goes a really long way in being able to maintain multiple
| flows of a conversation
| Arathorn wrote:
| Yes, it does, and has done for about 3-4 years.
| feanaro wrote:
| I'm not sure an entirely separate mechanism is needed to
| achieve Zulip-style threading, though? Seems like the current
| thread design could easily be adapted to support named
| threads.
|
| Does Zulip support nested threads?
| MrJohz wrote:
| This is pretty much the classic forum system, isn't it? A bunch
| of sections (sometimes nested), inside which you can post
| threads, and reply linearly to those threads.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Nesting was around pretty early on, but yeah.
|
| I think what all of these platforms are discovering is that
| we figured out some pretty intuitive patterns early on and
| are on a constant loop of wanting to do something different
| before eventually realizing this and reverting.
|
| There's a hybrid wherein you keep references to a branch in a
| thread but you still display a flat discussion. If you choose
| to follow the branch you can but otherwise all discussion
| sits on one level. I like this way more than default nesting,
| which can be impossible to follow.
| heyoni wrote:
| Which slack does already.
| culi wrote:
| This is one of slack's weak-points imo. Discord allows
| you to reply to a particular message when making a post.
| In Slack you make a "thread" but then click "also post in
| channel". This can cause a lot of confusion if all you're
| trying to do is use it as a reply because most people
| will start replying to the thread, not realizing you were
| trying to keep the conversation as part of the regular
| channel flow
| media-trivial wrote:
| Google Chat (part of Google Workspace) has this. At work we use
| Slack though :/ (would like to try Chat instead).
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| My company uses Google Chat, which indeed has rooms with
| mandatory threads. You wouldn't believe the number of people
| who just post their new topics in whatever last existing
| thread is visible. We've been using it for years now and
| asking people to create their own thread still happens
| several times a day. Most people just don't get it.
|
| I guess this is why Google Chat is now pushing thread-less
| rooms, and is rolling out on-the-fly threads like Slack.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Why is Twist "worse in probably every dimension"? (Asking
| honestly, I'd like to know where you find it inferior to slack,
| which I have used in the past, while I haven't looked at Twist
| in depth)
| derefr wrote:
| Does Twist support a "braided" view of threads, i.e. where you
| can see all messages in all threads in a channel ordered
| chronologically, with some clear visual indicator of which
| thread each message is from? (Sort of as if people are talking
| directly in the channel, but where every message has a threaded
| "provenance"; and where you can collapse/mute threads you don't
| care about, causing those messages to no longer show up in the
| braided view for you.)
|
| This is _kind of_ what you get from Slack 's threads -- _if_
| everyone always uses the "also share to channel" option in the
| thread, _and_ if everyone also make sure to otherwise never
| post directly to the channel. Which is impossible to enforce,
| of course.
|
| I feel like, _without_ such a braided view, it 'd be very hard
| to follow several threads at once, if you were e.g. helping
| multiple people in a "support" channel, with each conversation
| being a thread. Once you navigated into a thread, you wouldn't
| be able to see activity in sibling threads until you navigated
| out. You'd know that _something_ happened, but you wouldn 't be
| able to glance at the content to tell if it's more urgent than
| your current conversation. (You could rely on app toast
| notifications, but you might miss these if you glance away for
| a moment.)
| replygirl wrote:
| you can enforce this in slack with a toggle
| NeckBeardPrince wrote:
| That's not available on all plans.
| replygirl wrote:
| ok, here's a free app that replicates it
| https://slack.com/apps/A022BL4HJLD-onlythreads
| jdright wrote:
| Care to explain how or point to some documentation please?
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-04-23 23:01 UTC)