Experiment with putting threads back behind a beta toggle

[Johennes]

Threads are one of the main drivers of #24392. Purely as an experiment, it would be helpful to compare the notification experience on Element Web with threads enabled to a state where threads are turned off and use the reply fallback when rendering.

This has been prototyped in matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#11151.

Issues found on the deployment are tracked below.

Issues

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1. Some rooms don't clear the unread count / dot when entering them
2. Thread replies only trigger an unread dot but no unread count

[thibaultamartin]

Is this available in the latest Nightly? I couldn't find it in settings :)

[weeman1337]

Is this available in the latest Nightly? I couldn't find it in settings :)

matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#11151 is a draft PR → not available on nightly . But to test it you can use the PR deployment.

[Johennes]

@thibaultamartin had you noticed any other issues not already listed above on the deployment yesterday?

[thibaultamartin]

A regular issue I face with threads and stuck notifications is that restarting Element (or rather: updating my Nightly) "re-sticks" notifications that were unstuck.

For example the main channel I use has no notifications left (usually after being cleared with "Mark as unread"), and when I update it's back to ~20 unread notifications

[Johennes]

Do you mean you see that on normal / nightly Element? Or on the deployment with threads turned off?

[thibaultamartin]

Oh my apologies I meant regular Nightly, I didn't have the time to try the experimental deployment yet! I will give it a go today

[Johennes]

Re-tested on the updated deployment today and, unfortunately, the two issues listed above still persist.

[johanricher]

Thank you for considering making the Threads feature optional (via a toggle). My intuition is that a lot of problems related to stuck notifications are caused by Threads.

Is the current understanding of the dev team that disabling Threads doesn't / wouldn't help with stuck notifications?

[t3chguy]

@johanricher last time we discussed it we concluded that a significant portion of stuck notification issues relate to threads, but not certain that turning them off would undo the damage and also were unable to get buy-in from the Product/Management teams to disable threads.