New post: IM Threads

Signed-off-by: Maxime “pep” Buquet <pep@bouah.net>

content/posts/im-threads.md

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+---
+title: "IM Threads"
+date: 2018-09-22T22:00:00+01:00
+draft: true
+---
+
+I have had the opportunity to use [Mattermost](https://www.mattermost.org) for
+over a year, and I thought I would give some feedback on a feature I still
+have troubles dealing with: **threads**.
+
+A bit of a disclaimer, Mattermost is the only solution of its kind
+(centralized, non-standard, one blessed client) that I have used extensively.
+I do not use Slack, Gitter, Discord or what have you. I generally use XMPP and
+IRC (via XMPP), in my terminal.
+
+I haven't gone through all the stages of grief yet concerning this topic, so
+please bear with me. This article addresses usability issues with the web
+client. I do not have solutions to offer, but I hope that my criticism will be
+taken into account, and I would be happy to work with the project to try and
+improve the feature.
+
+## What I understand people want
+
+- A way to group discussions by topic.
+- Being able to talk without having to state context all the time.
+- Being able to refer to these discussions in their integrity, (via some URI,
+  or else), to even read days later.
+- Not having to highlight every concerned party in every message.
+- Not being highlighted if you are not part of it
+
+Out of context this feels like people just wanted _channels_, because this is
+exactly what I described, but certainly details are important here. What I
+think people want is _fine grained_ all-of-the-above, that is, have usual
+channels set a common topic, e.g., "programming", and be able to split
+discussions happening in this channel even more, with some kind of nested
+channels, or threads.
+
+---
+WIP
+
+This last bullet point is actually the most important part.
+
+## Implementation case study
+
+Mattermost, as other IM solutions, regroup most of these features under what
+they call __threads__.
+
+I'll try to report a couple of things to upstream if possible, in the
+meantime here's what I think about it:
+
+- In MM: missing fork feature: after 3 messages in a thread it's already
+  diverged from the original discussion, and might get back to it at some
+  point later on. What changes from a normal channel?
+
+- In MM, UI is unintuitive:
+  * Not easily accessible. You have to move your pointer to the small icon at
+    the far right of your screen.
+  * No keybindings to navigate between threads, that makes them a hard to use.
+  * Thread messages appear in the channel, that makes the whole thing
+    unreadable when there are multiple threads active at the same time.
+  * Bug? threads window not scrolling down automatically.
+  * possible resolution: change into short-lived channels?
+  * Can only have one thread opened at a time. That means if I want to follow
+    a thread, I can't reply to/follow any other threads.
+
+- Too much micro-management to get right
+
+
+- Mattermost should allow users to attach anything (Direct Messages, Channels)
+  where the current thread UI lives, so they don't have to start a "fake thread"
+  just to be able to counter the limitations of the tool. Especially in 1:1
+  Direct Messages, where most of the benefits of threads are moot.