We found the basic models in Slack, Teams and Zulip too rigid. In all such clones of the Slack design, the members of channels (and threads) are static. You are either a participant in the entire channel or you arent. But it doesnt work like that in the real world.
For starters, a thread is a personal idea. (I think this is what you mean by opt-in). My idea of a thread is probably not your idea of a thread. So the concept of shared thread (channel) is hard to fathom. Second, my thread is made of activities I need to complete for the task at hand. In the process, I will interact with as many people or as few as I see fit, all in the pursuit of my goal.
Not all the people I interact with (thread participants) are necessarily members of my team. This is where the rigidity is a real problem with the aforementioned products. I cannot know all the participants at the time of channel creation. And once involve a non-team-member user in the thread, they become unwitting recipients of noise, and they cant do a damn thing about it.
If thats the scenario you think search is most applicable for, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Firstly you have to remember what it is you are looking for. Even if you do, the information is hidden in so many channels that you are unlikely to find what you are looking for without some effort. I think the best search is no search at all. Searching makes sennse for VERY large universe of data, as in WWW. The sheer volume makes creation of optimized search engine a profitable one. But a small universe search engine is inherently sub-optiomal, & is going to make the user sift through the "results" to find what they are looking for.
I dont get why everyone thinks that searching for anything in a chat system is a good idea. This has nothing to do with how good the search engine is within the system. Because of Slack's inadequate design, they promoted searching, and now everyone thinks search is a MUST. If you really have to search in chat, I say you already have done something wrong. If searching in an email system, with its vastly more structured data, is itself inefficient, why would anyone think searching in chat is a good idea?
For starters, a thread is a personal idea. (I think this is what you mean by opt-in). My idea of a thread is probably not your idea of a thread. So the concept of shared thread (channel) is hard to fathom. Second, my thread is made of activities I need to complete for the task at hand. In the process, I will interact with as many people or as few as I see fit, all in the pursuit of my goal.
Not all the people I interact with (thread participants) are necessarily members of my team. This is where the rigidity is a real problem with the aforementioned products. I cannot know all the participants at the time of channel creation. And once involve a non-team-member user in the thread, they become unwitting recipients of noise, and they cant do a damn thing about it.
There's gotta be a better way.