[usr1106]

The best chat system for geeks is zulip. Messages threaded, everything markdown. very efficient use of screen estate.

For less geeky use I indeed have had Delta on my list for years. Haven't really tried yet myself, not to speak about convincing.

[ezst]

People keep hammering zulip as the example of threads done right. I disagree. They are practically indistinguishable from rooms, in looks and behaviour. It's not like zulip is offering a better abstraction/isolation level: you end-up with just as many threads, as much (in)convenience dealing with them, and the exact same caveats (there's no known solution to people writing out of thread, so the cognitive load is still worse - IMO/E - than "no threading at all").

[usr1106]

That's why I wrote it is for geeks. Maybe I should have said it's for geeks that keep don't mind the offort of their stuff/data/code organized. You need to put some thinking to use reusable topics. And when discussion goes off-topic you need know where to move it. Zulip has support to do that, other systems just don't.

I was in a company for over 6 years where zulip threads were very organized. "zulip police" would tell those starting to create a mess. It's a cultural thing. We also spent significant time to keep our code clean. 90% of the work-places keep neither their communications nor their code organzied.