Curing Our Slack Addiction • Hacker News Board

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#151

Post by jqgatsby » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

phillc73 wrote: post #135

katheriin wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, Slack users have reported an average of 50% reduction of internal email (source: https://slack.com/results ). But you're right, Slack is a closed system, and thus it cannot really replace email when used for external communications. This is where Fleep comes in - a messenger that works with email, too. You can include anyone in a conversation with their email address, and if they're not a Fleep user yet, the…

Hadn't heard of Fleep before, but thought immediately that it might solve one use case for me. After checking the pricing (good), if there was a self-hosted version (no, but maybe not a deal breaker) I looked for the Android app installer. Only available from Google Play Store. Unfortunately, that kills Fleep for me. Please consider making your app directly downloadable and not reliant on Google Play Services.

Why is this a requirement?

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#152

Post by Someone1234 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

pierrebai wrote: post #148

Why has SMTP evolved in all those years? Email could handle much more automation, and be friendlier to on-demand inclusion in discussion threads, but AFAIK, it doesn't support a standard way to provide: 1. End-user controlled behaviour. 2. Whole-thread forwarding initiated by the end-user. #1 would require a way to allow stantard plugins to be written, either by sysadmin or end-users. (Obviously, the capability and a…

> Why hasn't SMTP evolved in all those years?

Real answer: A duopoly in the email space give two-three companies too much power over SMTP and email in general (and they have no interest in changing it, IE 6 style).

These companies? Microsoft (Exchange, Hotmail/Outlook.com), Google (Gmail, Google Apps, Google Apps for Education), and Yahoo! (Yahoo! Mail).

If these "big three" don't want to support something then it doesn't exist. If they do want to support something then you're adding it to your SMTP/mail server stack regardless of how much you wish to.

Now, I know what you're going to say "what about Sendmail, Postfix, and other SMTP daemons?" But these open source email daemons are very beholden to what the "big three" do. If your SMTP daemon doesn't work with their servers then it is effectively broken and nobody will run it.

The reality is that the SOURCE of almost all non-automated email on the internet comes from these big three (Exchange shouldn't be under-estimated in this context).

So that's why, we're in an IE 6 situation all over again, but this time Google and Yahoo! are also playing gatekeeper in addition to Microsoft.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#153

Post by patcon » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

> For many months myself and a few others have been trying to make Slack work for us. We would be the bad cops and point out people’s bad behaviour and suggest alternatives.

> When someone would report an issue in Slack, we’d point out the appropriate JIRA or GitHub project where that should be reported.

This got me thinking: Part of the problem is that the attention of others is a commons -- a vast wealth that we each have an interest in extracting from, but which takes a toll collectively.

Perhaps there's a way to internalize for a "consumer of attention" their attention-cost externality. So if certain people are extracting too much from the commons in the form of "@person" and "@everyone/@channel" messages, perhaps a bot could randomly ping them with noise messages in proportion to their attention-grabbing actions, to make them feel some of that pain and adjust accordingly without policing :)

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#154

Post by KZeillmann » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

makeitsuckless wrote: post #81

T2_t2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO of a flat company probably has a need to see everything, JIC. Not all use cases are equal.

> The CEO of a flat company probably has a need to see everything And Slack does an excellent job at demonstrating why that is idealistic nonsense and simply bad management that doesn't work, simply by making it possible to actually see almost _everything_. It's one of the great things about Slack, it's much like Scrum in that respect: it may not be the answer, but it sure as hell will confront you with what the actu…

This is exactly the issue. Slack will expose more issues than it will create. If people misuse a tool because of some underlying problems, switching tools will just hide the problems, not solve them.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#155

Post by aaron695 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #97

Recently I've seen a lot of anti-Slack articles. Not once have I heard a colleague criticising Slack. Every startup I know is using it and praising it. When I work with some people who still use email to coordinate in situations where I usually use Slack, I find it to be maddeningly time-wasting. Email is terrible for group conversation. It strikes me that there must be some more general for the Slack criticism. Perh…

I think you don't get the article at all.

Slack is heroin (is the point), it is great to start, and seems great for a while, but for many people it gets worse and worse as time goes by.

You have not answered the point at all.

Obviously many people spend their lives enjoying heroin (with no bad affects)

But for many it's toxic, why are you not just an addict selling something you yet don't understand?

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#156

Post by dvanduzer » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

te_chris wrote: post #106

rekoros wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a channel for every "conversation", not tweet. The benefit here is that you can keep talking to someone without asking them to email support@company.com. There is usually a window of open channels -- 15 or 40, say, that remain active in parallel. Oldest channels outside the window get auto-archived. You can also favorite directly from Slack with "-sameroom Only those people who are "on call" will actually see th…

This seems terrible. If much rather people used proper support software like desk for support

That is one way of thinking about the world. Another way is to consider all software as support software. The machines are supposed to be there to help us.

There are countless players offering transactional support systems, and just like every other Big Software Vertical, the industry is still re-aligning around "Web 2.0". Desk's primary market distinction is that Salesforce owns them. (That's a huge selling point in the enterprise, but not necessarily interesting to the HN crowd.)

The grandparent post is describing a workflow for more conversational customer interactions. The industry term-of-art for this is something like multi-channel support, but Slack's Big Philosophy is to just be more playful. The "proper software" to use is the software that gets stuff done.

If you get more than two people defining what "proper support software" is, you end up with something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMC_Remedy_Action_Request_Syst...

People just have different workflows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#157

Post by phillc73 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

jqgatsby wrote: post #151

phillc73 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't heard of Fleep before, but thought immediately that it might solve one use case for me. After checking the pricing (good), if there was a self-hosted version (no, but maybe not a deal breaker) I looked for the Android app installer. Only available from Google Play Store. Unfortunately, that kills Fleep for me. Please consider making your app directly downloadable and not reliant on Google Play Services.

Why is this a requirement?

I don't have Goggle Play Services installed on my phone and am not going to do so.

I understand why companies want their apps in the "Store" for discovery purposes. However, I don't understand why they won't provide an alternative direct download.

I do have F-Droid installed, but I appreciate companies may not want to open source their app. No problem, but I also won't be forced to install Google Play just to obtain it.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#158

Post by sickbeard » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

Email communication, slow, initiator feels ignored.

Slack/chat communication, instant, receiver feels overwhelmed.

The problem is not email or slack, it's the method in which we communicate. We need to make sure we use the right tools, as the author mentioned, knowledge bases, email, chat etc at the appropriate times.

The problem is not Slack per say, it's using Slack for all communications.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#159

Post by piquadrat » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #149

swalsh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Integrations.. are a gimmick" I disagree, some are. Giphy, though a pleasure to have on the team is a gimmick. Hubot is an essential member of the team. Our company is deploying pretty much all day, and the integration of our deployment system with the bot scripts make things so much easier.

> Giphy, though a pleasure to have on the team I couldn't disagree more. I hate giphy integrations, and I disable them in any room I have any control in. It becomes abused far too easily, and the results are so rarely relevant. "/giphy high five" will return a gif of someone high-fiving 30% of the time, and will return nonsense garbage the rest of the time, prompting people to try, try again, flooding the room with a…

> "/giphy high five" will return a gif of someone high-fiving 30% of the time, and will return nonsense garbage the rest of the time

Try https://rightgif.com/. Although it's one of those products that make you think tech startups have finally jumped the shark, it works surprisingly well.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#160

Post by dvanduzer » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #149

swalsh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Integrations.. are a gimmick" I disagree, some are. Giphy, though a pleasure to have on the team is a gimmick. Hubot is an essential member of the team. Our company is deploying pretty much all day, and the integration of our deployment system with the bot scripts make things so much easier.

> Giphy, though a pleasure to have on the team I couldn't disagree more. I hate giphy integrations, and I disable them in any room I have any control in. It becomes abused far too easily, and the results are so rarely relevant. "/giphy high five" will return a gif of someone high-fiving 30% of the time, and will return nonsense garbage the rest of the time, prompting people to try, try again, flooding the room with a…

> control

This is the heart of the issue. If you are in a room that you don't like being in, then leave the room.

Communicating with other humans is difficult. If your team can't come to an understanding about how you have fun together, then you have much bigger problems.