Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

quill.chat

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#71

Post by atoav »

goatherders wrote: post #67
nstart wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes to this a 1000 times! It's amazing how our familiarity with certain interfaces changes our behaviour too. Anything that resembles a chat box and a "hit enter to send" encourages chat like behaviour. No matter whether it's threaded or otherwise. Interfaces like Jira or other software management tools which have ceremony involved before actually creating a task encourage people to think through things fully before…

I'd pay for a slack add-on that gave my folks "message tokens". If they used a token it would send a message to me and then, as soon as I replied, if would open a 3 minute window for us to correspond. Then the window would close and the convo would be over. 3 tokens per day per employee. would cut down on the annoying stuff.

Or, as suggested above, make it look less chatty, add mandatory subject lines.

Thinking up a subject alone focusses the mind.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#72

Post by johnmarcus »

super disappointing it was only in beta.

how will the API work for developers? Personally I think the attention Slack put into their API is the reason it is so popular and will continue to own the space until there is a competitor with their api/bot building abilities.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#73

Post by adrianmsmith »

wpietri wrote: post #35
lancesells wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off sounds and notifications?

That can work for some slacks and some channels. But with others, not so much. When you're being paid to pay attention to client needs, there's only so much you can get away with.

But I guess if you're being paid to pay attention to client needs, then you're going to get interrupted, no matter what the technology you use.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#74

Post by wpietri »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #73
wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can work for some slacks and some channels. But with others, not so much. When you're being paid to pay attention to client needs, there's only so much you can get away with.

But I guess if you're being paid to pay attention to client needs, then you're going to get interrupted, no matter what the technology you use.

But Slack still creates the expectation of immediacy in a way that other tools don't. Handling the same number of clients via email is a whole different experience. And Slack makes it very hard for people to filter out noise.

To my mind, Slack is to virtual work what open offices are to physical collaboration. They can be used well, but the default is a continuous drain on attention.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#75

Post by folmar »

nerdponx wrote: post #65
luddep wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Quill.) Everything in Quill is a thread -- which is quite a big shift from an IRC-like firehose (even with optional threading.) We've found the shift to have threading by default creates a behavior where you opt into just the conversations you care about, and don't have to skim through hundreds of messages to find what's relevant (or, say, replies to an earlier conversation.) May be hard to get across the…

I used MS Teams at work, which already has this "thread-first" method of communication. MS Teams is garbage overall. But the threaded-only chat style is actually kind of nice. It's easy to keep conversation threads in order, and people tend to veer less into off-topic banter. Plus I can just keep IRC and Discord open in the background for banter.

They are on the teams "teams" tab, but not on the "chat" tab... Not quite good.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#76

Post by obeid »

protomyth wrote: post #68
atoav wrote: post #42

As somebody who is often said to be right in the age bracket who should like things like these, I think in most cases I'd prefer email over this. This is why: friction is not always a bad thing. Having to print out that mail twice before putting it into the envelope stops you from sending stupid stuff – it would just not be worth the effort, or you'd reconsider before you bring it to the mail. This means also frictio…

I have a weird observation about the friction of e-mail. I think a high percentage of the friction comes from having to think up a subject. It seems that step, if required, forces some extra thought. It changes things a bit if you don't enforce subjects.

I have a boss who often uses the subject to send a usually short and concise message and leave the email blank.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#77

Post by webmaven »

wutbrodo wrote: post #36
ahuang wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Quill). We've found threading to work really well with teams as small as 3. (2, probably not.) In professional contexts, conversations tend to be about specific topics -- someone posts a GitHub issue, bug report, feature discussion, etc, vs say a more social conversation that is less structured. It's a way to keep track of the conversations you're having instead of a stream of consciousness (with multiple…

> We've found threading to work really well with teams as small as 3. (2, probably not.) I For what it's worth, my company is (unfortunately) very chat-heavy, and I use threads in two person conversations fairly often. Sometimes conversations branch off of other conversations.

I'm pretty sure the GP was referring to total team size, not the number of participants in any particular conversation.

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#78

Post by maps7 »

protomyth wrote: post #68
atoav wrote: post #42

As somebody who is often said to be right in the age bracket who should like things like these, I think in most cases I'd prefer email over this. This is why: friction is not always a bad thing. Having to print out that mail twice before putting it into the envelope stops you from sending stupid stuff – it would just not be worth the effort, or you'd reconsider before you bring it to the mail. This means also frictio…

I have a weird observation about the friction of e-mail. I think a high percentage of the friction comes from having to think up a subject. It seems that step, if required, forces some extra thought. It changes things a bit if you don't enforce subjects.

How do you need to think of a subject? You can just copy and paste the main part of an email or use an external reference (Jira issue name etc)

Re: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus

#79

Post by wutbrodo »

webmaven wrote: post #77
wutbrodo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've found threading to work really well with teams as small as 3. (2, probably not.) I For what it's worth, my company is (unfortunately) very chat-heavy, and I use threads in two person conversations fairly often. Sometimes conversations branch off of other conversations.

I'm pretty sure the GP was referring to total team size, not the number of participants in any particular conversation.

Sure, I'm not just talking about participants in a conversation either (with the possibility of a wider audience). Even in DMs, I use threads plenty. Sometimes someone asks multiple questions not realizing that they'll branch off significantly, and threads are a tidy way to address that. I don't see why habits relevant to a DM wouldn't generalize to teams of that size too (in which case you're always DMing).
Post reply on HN