To me, the entirety of current conversation topics on UHH is a business cocktail party in a hotel ballroom with many groups chatting all at once. A general conversation is the topic. A thread is one continuous stream of discussion about that topic. UHH contains many threads wrapped around the same conversation.

Conversation: How to use flash

Thread 1: How to use flash with a lighting tent for macro (started on date ___/___/___)
Thread 2: How to use flash with a lighting tent for macro (started on date ___/___/___)
Thread: How to use flash for portraiture
Thread: How to use flash fill in daylight
Thread: How to use flash with various light modifiers

…and so it goes.

I don't get hung up on slang, as I've been all over the USA doing training. Different people in different regions with different backgrounds and generational references use language differently. If you read between the lines, use a dictionary and thesaurus (right click on a word on the Mac and you can look it up), and ask for clarification, you learn something new.

What is annoying to some is common parlance for others. Just because it is different does not make it wrong or inferior, any more than speaking a different language makes someone wrong or inferior. Arguing over whether a bleeding man got "double tapped" or received two gunshot wounds does nothing to save his life...

I agree about "capture." Someone here recently said it's appropriate because we capture a moment in time. Well many of the greatest painters (artists) did the same thing. Look at Rembrandt's "The Night Watch," Picasso's "Guernica," or any of Renoir's many pictures of people and their activities. The difference, of course, is that painters work long and hard at making their pix, while we photogs just click, download, maybe manipulate, and send. The best photo images are made, not captured.

I don't know what your work background is/was. I worked for an industry leading data processing company for nearly 40 years. I started out working in printing and shipping while I was still in school. I retired as a lead programmer analyst. I designed and wrote software in multiple languages, and I designed data structures and even databases. The term thread, as used here, comes from the data processing world. To me, a thread is not a conversation, it's just a part of the data that links the records together, an element within the conversation, not the conversation.

Why go so many people say thread instead of conversation. Using the word thread in place of conversation just reduces it to data, instead of human verbal/visual interaction, thus dehumanizing the whole conversation. I understand what thread means, I was a database and software designer for over thirty years, and to me, thread is only an element within a conversation, not the conversation.
Another pretentious word, glass in place of lens. The glass is only part of a lens, not the lens as a whole. Another one is, capture, instead of photo or photograph. Anyone else have any good examples that fit my rambling...