we don't send notifications for @-mentions, by default. instead, mentions ends up in your activity feed so you can check it on your time. But, for when you need to reach someone, we have !!-mentions — which will send a notification.
(you can also set per-channel and per-thread notification settings — so you can turn it down, or turn it up.)
(I work at Quill.) Yes! That's exactly how we think about it. By default, @-mentions _will not_ notify you, and instead end up in your activity feed. And if something is truly urgent, we have priority notifications (!!-mentions) which will send a notification. (They have a higher cost, and make it very clear that it will cause disruption on the other end.)
We think of it as bringing the way people behave in person, online. If you have headphones on, working away, and I have a low priority question, I'll find you later. But if I just brought down prod, I urgently need to reach you :)
(I work at Quill.) Everything in Quill is a thread -- which is quite a big shift from an IRC-like firehose (even with optional threading.) We've found the shift to have threading by default creates a behavior where you opt into just the conversations you care about, and don't have to skim through hundreds of messages to find what's relevant (or, say, replies to an earlier conversation.)
May be hard to get across the _feel_ of using a product in screenshots -- we're ramping up our invites (making sure things scale + features work as expected!) but we'll be fully open quite soon! :) (and, we might be slightly partial to dense UIs!)
(I work at Quill.) Of course! We take your privacy and security very seriously. Your regular conversations are absolutely yours -- your messages by default are encrypted in transit and at rest.
For user's that want extra security, we plan on offering e2e encryption for direct messages and groups (and maybe eventually channels). There are some tradeoffs with e2e encryption including scalability, search, history, and just the ergonomics of using it, which is why we call out that distinction specifically.
(But, we can see how current wording may be a but obtuse -- we'll tweak it.)
(you can also set per-channel and per-thread notification settings — so you can turn it down, or turn it up.)