Not the person you are replying to, but I much prefer catching up on a small number of channels, than having to click around a bunch of different individual topics. But it is a tradeoff.
You don't have to click into topics. Zulip has a "channel view" which lets you see all messages in a channel, chronologically, just like Slack or Discord or IRC. That's actually the default experience when you click on a channel in the sidebar.
It also has an "entire server" view if you want to see everything in one stream.
I think it depends on how you're interacting with the instance/server. I find the rust zulip much easier to follow than the k8s slack (or the lancer discord). I can see on a (much) quieter instance where it's a group of friends you want to see most messages where a single channel is a better option.
I agree with this. We use Slack at work, where we have a small team, and most of us are reading most messages in realtime. It works*
Contrast that to my experience with a group of volunteers who might log in a couple of days a week, communication is a lot more async, and you might not care about all the topics of discussion. I have found Zulip makes it easier to come back and catch up on just the bits you care about.
*I still think Slack encourages a "continuous partial attention" way of engaging with chat that I don't like. But, we do make it work.
