Pet peeve #73: threaded discussions. You may have seen it in a Usenet reader or perhaps even your email. It may seem like a great way to manage a long conversation with multiple ideas and lines of discussion. OK, that’s fine, I think you’re wrong and looking at this a little too technically but it’s not forcing that perspective on anyone else so fine.
I get peeved when its suggested that conversational tools like Twitter or Slack should implement threaded messages. Nope. You have now failed my secret test, please disembark from the pragmatic train.
If a conversation requires threading, that conversation has already gone way off the rails.
Two people talking about one thing and another two people talking about another thing in the same conversation is the definition of talking past each other. Why should our software enable that?
If an email or chat ends up covering two important topics, e.g. whether to use solid or liquid fuel on a rocket and what color to paint the rocket, it was poorly written in the first place. A reasonable person can easily jump in and say “let’s talk about the fuel now and we can figure out the color later”.
Bottom line: I think people can and should handle breaking off side discussions on their own instead of trying to push weird hierarchy on participants.
