Proposal to change the rules of this forum Right now the handbook says:

Replying

When you want to respond to someone’s post, always use threaded replies.

I've always interpreted this as discouraging including replies in the top-level channel. But I miss out on a lot of discussions that happen after a post goes "above the fold". If I didn't comment on it early on I miss the chance to follow the conversation. So I'd like to propose we explicitly encourage people to bump comments to the channel. Particularly if say the top-level of the channel hasn't had activity in a day or so. And if the commenter is different from the original poster. I'm just thinking aloud, so feel free to suggest other rules. I guess this has never been explicitly forbidden. So maybe I'm not proposing changing a rule so much as clarifying a grey area. I'd particularly appreciate hearing if this seems like a bad idea. cc @Kam Leung who might be interested in this thread.

This will be an interesting discussion. I disagree strongly. I don't like the thread replies that are also shared to the top level. If I am interested in a thread but don't want to leave a reply, I'll use the popup menu on the message to manually subscribe to replies. But there are many threads I'm not particularly interested in being notified every time there's a reply. I might go binge the thread later. By encouraging sharing replies to the top level, it'll make the top level chaotic. It'll make the top level a mix of multiple discussions all happening at once, without the Zulip-like tools to manage this mess.

I agree in principle. I just don't think we have the scale atm that this is a concern. Spreading the contributions we do get feels more important at this scale.

When you talk about scale, it's worth noting that what's relevant here is how many messages people are seeing / potentially being notified of, not how many messages are being posted. Even though the volume of messages posted to this community is small, I already have a hard time keeping up with the threads I subscribe to, plus all the other sources of messages in my life. I no more want to see 20 more messages a day from threads I'm not paying attention to than I want 20 more emails, or 20 more people to follow on Mastodon. I'm at my limit (that's why I follow so few people on Mastodon).

Totally understandable. As another data point, I spend many days receiving 0 notifications from this Slack. But I'm sure the burdens of the admin are greater. Maybe the rule should be, tag @Kartik Agaram 😬 I need to be careful what I wish for.

I agree with Ivan on this one, though I do find it very annoying that I can't "auto-subscribe" to threads on slack or discord, so that it becomes opt-out instead (unless I've missed it - then please let me know). @Mariano Guerra's recap is a great help for me - showing me things I've missed in a less overwhelming format. And it magically appears to me on whatever social media I currently have open! ✨ Adding to the data-points: I receive no notifications from this Slack (intentionally). I just open the app occasionally, and tap through all the new stuff (channels ordered by recent activity).

Like @Lu Wilson, I'm always clicking "Get notified about new replies," and as @Kartik Agaram says if I forget to subscribe when a post has no comments, then I'm more likely to miss the thread. (Can't tell if that is really a problem because, of course, if I miss subscribing to a good thread, how am I going to know?) So is the real question here whether Slack can be adjusted so that one automatically subscribes to threads?

Every once in a while I'll feel it's justified to "send to the channel" a reply that is enough of a departure that I would consider posting it independently, but maybe there the solution is to just post it independently. It's going to be a really subjective line, regardless, and to be frank, the ambiguity will tend to rachet up the noise in the main channel. Broadly I'm with Ivan on this. It's not for every community, but I enjoy the structure that the threading rule creates here. Occasionally I'll scroll back and see if any threads I was vaguely interested in took off.

I'm trying to be more deliberate about subscribing. I'm also noticing about myself that I never click on a channel if it's not lit up. Particularly on a phone, the screen in the Slack app that's just a list of channels is a powerful example of the paradox of choice. There's a tiny voice inside my head that runs screaming every time it sees it.