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Search at Slack

slack.engineering

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Re: Search at Slack

#71

Post by wcummings »

subpixel wrote: post #22

Slack is great, but it's adoption by popular opensource communities is problematic. Why? Because opensource communities are on the free plan, which limits search once you have 10k messages. I've had experiences where I wanted to revisit a question I had asked in a Slack channel the previous week, and been unable to find it. As a result, everyone burns out faster b/c the same questions get asked and answered over, and…

IRC isn't that hard. Just register a channel on freenode (which exists for the purpose of facilitating open source!), there's already a web interface [1]. You can stick a nice link on your project's webpage. It's even less work for users than Slack, you don't have to register, just punch in a nickname.

Someone in your project can manage to setup a logbot that dumps logs onto a webserver, which will be indexed by google. I suspect there are services that will do it for you, so you might not even have to setup the bot yourself. If there isn't one I'd have half a mind to build one, if it gets more projects using IRC.

[1] https://webchat.freenode.net/

Re: Search at Slack

#72

Post by trafficlight »

andygcook wrote: post #57
trafficlight wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been searching for a solution to this as well. Our Slack holds an amazing amount of information, but it's really difficult to curate that information efficiently. It'd be cool to highlight a piece of information and insert it into a wiki-style site.

We're working on this at Tettra.co. Building a wiki that works in tandem with Slack. Would love for you to check it out http://tettra.co Feel free to email me with any uestions too - andy@tettra.co

Very interesting. We'll definitely check it out.

Re: Search at Slack

#73

Post by [deleted] »

jakebasile wrote: post #34
subpixel wrote: post #22

Slack is great, but it's adoption by popular opensource communities is problematic. Why? Because opensource communities are on the free plan, which limits search once you have 10k messages. I've had experiences where I wanted to revisit a question I had asked in a Slack channel the previous week, and been unable to find it. As a result, everyone burns out faster b/c the same questions get asked and answered over, and…

I agree. I am dismayed when I see open source projects using Slack in lieu of IRC or a mailing list. It means I'd be forced to use their awful client (which is slow, buggy, and far too resource intensive for a chat application) or use their awful IRC integration. This is all in addition to the issue you raise of Slack being a black hole beholden to a profit motivated entity. Just use IRC. It's practically impossible…

[deleted]

Re: Search at Slack

#74

Post by subpixel »

emidln wrote: post #66
jakebasile wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I am dismayed when I see open source projects using Slack in lieu of IRC or a mailing list. It means I'd be forced to use their awful client (which is slow, buggy, and far too resource intensive for a chat application) or use their awful IRC integration. This is all in addition to the issue you raise of Slack being a black hole beholden to a profit motivated entity. Just use IRC. It's practically impossible…

The client might be a legitimate issue, but being an information black-hole is no different than IRC. If you wanted a history, you should have made your client or a bot log that history.

If IRC was as simple and elegant and extensible as some would suggest, there wouldn't be a posse of persistent chat companies worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Re: Search at Slack

#75

Post by PhasmaFelis »

accountface wrote: post #55
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't they? One of the great strengths of the internet is that information doesn't usually go away; most of the time, you can refer back to something said 10 years ago with little extra effort. Slack breaks that.

Isn't that the norm for chat apps though? It's not like they're breaking anything... people are just expecting something that doesn't really exist?

Every chat app I've ever used going back to ICQ keeps permanent logs, except for Slack. (Technically Slack does too, it just keeps them on its own server and won't let you look unless you pay.)

Re: Search at Slack

#76

Post by rajhans »

Great work! A few questions for the author(s): In the article, you have listed 9 feature extractors/templates. In the final model, what's the total number (or rough magnitude) of features? How much data (or ballpark estimate) did you train this on? Did you try to deal with potential difference in distribution across your data sampling sources?

Re: Search at Slack

#77

Post by bearcobra »

I'd love it if they made it easier to search just the channel or conversation you have in focus. Having the filter autocomplete based on what channel your on seems like a good middle ground.

Re: Search at Slack

#78

Post by dilap »

I thought this was going to be an announcement about how they finally fixed search...

A suggestion: When I search, what I want 99% of the time to happen is that the current window I'm looking at quickly gets filtered to my search query. Ranking doesn't matter, just show exact matches ranked by time.

1% of the time, I want something else.

Re: Search at Slack

#79

Post by chimeracoder »

donretag wrote: post #26
throwthisawayt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a really interesting problem to work on. Are you hiring anyone for this team (esp those new to search)?

My experience as an experienced search developer is that there are very few search specific positions, if any, outside of the Bay Area. My current job is working remotely for a SF based company, where I do everything but search. :(

Slack's search team is based in NYC: https://medium.com/@noah_weiss/starting-up-slack-s-search-le...

Re: Search at Slack

#80

Post by astronautjones »

rodionos wrote: post #47
jakebasile wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I am dismayed when I see open source projects using Slack in lieu of IRC or a mailing list. It means I'd be forced to use their awful client (which is slow, buggy, and far too resource intensive for a chat application) or use their awful IRC integration. This is all in addition to the issue you raise of Slack being a black hole beholden to a profit motivated entity. Just use IRC. It's practically impossible…

The consensus on our team (40% macos/60% linux) that the Slack client is too slow. Usability around search can be improved as well. To the extent that we've started looking at alternatives.

We use Windows and have found that version of the client. to hang sporadically at least once a day. Pretty frustrating, i've just given up on it and solely use the web app
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