[abalone]

Slack's approach could be very good and the "7 or 8 percent" figure is not necessarily a bad thing. That figure could mean that most of the time, regular Slack channels work well for them. This feature helps address the 7-8% of the time where it's worth splitting off a thread.

Contrast that with a tool like Zulip where every message requires a topic, and you have a much more structured paradigm. Percentages mean nothing because it's simply mandatory. That forces more organization, but perhaps part of the appeal of Slack is that it doesn't have to be so organized. You just engage with your team, and the only structure you have to think about ahead of time is which channel to use.

So I can see the case for "spot-threading" like Slack is rolling out, while keeping the core organizational structure very simple.