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Search at Slack

slack.engineering

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Re: Search at Slack

#81

Post by derefr »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #43
accountface wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people using a chat app like a wiki to begin with

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.

Honestly, I'd expect these "public" Slack groups of FOSS projects to have search-engine-accessible archives, just like Usenet and mailing lists do through Google Groups. Why do I need to know what Slack even is, to be able to find+read the answer someone gave someone else to a question over Slack?

Re: Search at Slack

#82

Post by derefr »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #75
accountface wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Actually no: you can look all you like without paying, it's just kind of clumsy. If you "export your data from Slack" (yourteam.slack.com/services/export), you get the whole history, even on the free plan.

I've repeatedly considered writing a bot that would—on a regular schedule—poke this page with a headless browser to generate a dump, download said dump, and ingest it into ElasticSearch (which I'd then expose through a web search, or maybe just spit out batched archive pages into a static-site S3 bucket and let Google index them.) Such a bot would be a good companion to https://github.com/rauchg/slackin for FOSS teams.

But I haven't done any of that yet, because I get the feeling that putting enough attention on this little "feature" would get it quickly locked down.

Re: Search at Slack

#83

Post by krakensden »

endymi0n wrote: post #46
slantedview wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is like saying Hadoop or Spark or Kafka needs more competition outside the Java (JVM) world. Elasticsearch, at least, has a dead simple web API which makes it accessible from any platform, along with a slew of clients and integrations with other tools/platforms.

This. ElasticSearch is one of only two pieces of Java (the other one being Flyway) that's so good we use it anyway. Not too bad anymore with Docker, it's a REST API after all. In the end, ES really proved to be the least bad search server there's out there. The real crux isn't search, it's language. And as Lucene is made by technical linguists (a really rather special bunch) and Java is still universities' darling, i…

Have you looked at OkLog?

Re: Search at Slack

#84

Post by rrdharan »

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.

> Usability around search can be improved as well.

Curious if this statement is about the most recent experience post improvements mentioned in tfa?

Re: Search at Slack

#85

Post by stymaar »

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…

I agree with your concerns of open source projects using slack, but:

> I'd be forced to use their awful client

Who forces you ? You can use slack on the web can't you ? You don't need to have yet another browser engine running on you computer.

> Just use IRC.

Please don't … IRC is the opposite of user friendly: it has no good web interface so the casual user won't come in because he doesn't want to install and learn a new software (IRC client). But slack isn't the only option here, it's not even the best open by far, Gitter[1], Mattermost[2] and Discord[3] are alternatives to IRC which aren't Slack.

[1]: https://gitter.im/ [2]: https://about.mattermost.com/, they don't provide chat hosting but several organisation do host mattermost servers (Framasoft for instance https://framateam.org/) [3]: https://discordapp.com/ targeted at gamers, which is a good sign of quality, but fine for general purpose use.

Re: Search at Slack

#86

Post by jliszka »

dilap wrote: post #78

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.

Stay tuned :)

Re: Search at Slack

#87

Post by jakebasile »

stymaar wrote: post #85
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…

I agree with your concerns of open source projects using slack, but: > I'd be forced to use their awful client Who forces you ? You can use slack on the web can't you ? You don't need to have yet another browser engine running on you computer. > Just use IRC. Please don't … IRC is the opposite of user friendly: it has no good web interface so the casual user won't come in because he doesn't want to install and learn…

> Who forces you ? You can use slack on the web can't you

Slack's web client is still slow. Their "native" client is just a Chrome wrapper over their web app, with some glue code to hook up notifications.

> it has no good web interface so the casual user won't come in

https://webchat.freenode.net works fine. If you need or want help with a project and can't be asked to spend a few moments opening up an IRC client (native or web), then I don't know what to tell you.

> Gitter, Mattermost, and Discord

Gitter and Discord are both closed source, proprietary systems made by companies who want to make money. Open source projects shouldn't rely on them if possible.

Mattermost is OK, but requires running your own server. IRC is free, and there are public servers specifically made for open source projects.

Re: Search at Slack

#88

Post by jakebasile »

subpixel wrote: post #74
emidln wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IRC is simple enough for developers of and those using open source projects. Slack and their ilk have more of a place handling internal communications where non-technical people need to be involved.

Re: Search at Slack

#89

Post by jakebasile »

scrollaway wrote: post #36
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…

I've been a die-hard defender of IRC and yet, I have been using it less and less since I started using Discord. I can finally have a single platform for communication. Voice chat, text chat, group chats, friends list, async communication, unlimited logs (no 10k max msg nonsense), webhooks/integrations that let me do far more than IRC bots ever did. All of it under one account. Oh and the client doesn't suck, unlike S…

I like Discord a lot, it's far and away better than TeamSpeak and Vent. It's also better than Slack for private group conversations. But it is still a closed system owned by a for profit company.

Re: Search at Slack

#90

Post by isabellat »

bearcobra wrote: post #77

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.

If you use the shortcut 'Command-F' it will search the current channel or conversation by auto-populating the search bar with 'in:channel_name'. Hope that's what you are looking for! Here's a list of all shortcuts: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201374536-Slack-key....
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