Feel like this argument happened 5 months ago and 5 months before that too
Well, this one was supposed to be a little different, as instead of open vs closed, it was sync vs async. But when the topic of OS projects and closed tools comes up...
Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
111–120 of 536 posts
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#112Is that really happening that open source communities use Slack as their primary communications channel? I haven't seen that happening in the communities I participate in (Python/Django/...). What I do see is that more and more communities switch from IRC to Slack as the primary "sync" channel (while still maintaining mailing lists, bug trackers and the like). And as much as I hate it, the success can't be denied. Es…
Slack chat provides a number of nice features that IRC (at least out of the box... I know there have been attempts) does not. IRCCloud at least lets you see chat history, which IRC doesn't have out of the box but Slack does.
Slack only provides a bit of history unless it's a paid account. What open source community could support that many paid users on Slack?
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It is one thing to deal with one of these things, but when you have to install ten to get The modern office large office is pretty bad in this respect. Really not uncommon to see things like • Need to have Slack open • Need to keep an eye on Basecamp/pm software • Need to have Outlook open / check in on for email and calendar invites • Need Skype open because not everyone uses Slack • GitLab is open in another tab I…
I don't even bother logging out, ever. I just have them open in different tabs. Imagine having about 7 tabs open. By the time I'm finished with the last tab, something new has come up on the first tab I checked. Huge waste of time. I'm trying to wean myself from all these services, but it's not easy. This or that project is on GitHub, but join the developers on Slack. And I hate Slack.
I turned all of my notifications off and use Pomodoro timers.
If it really can't wait <25 minutes, they can call me or come to my desk. It's amazing how many things aren't "immediate" if you create a slight cost with requesting attention.
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#114What drives me nuts is that there are so many of these things. I know groups that (for business or pleasure) use Slack, Discord, Skype, Google Hangouts, IRC, etc. All of these clients are a bit more obstrusive than they need to be in terms of pop-up notifications, software updates, cpu, memory, transfer, etc. They all screw up enough that there's always a little apprehension that something will go wrong when you get…
>It is one thing to deal with one of these things, but when you have to install ten to get The modern office large office is pretty bad in this respect. Really not uncommon to see things like • Need to have Slack open • Need to keep an eye on Basecamp/pm software • Need to have Outlook open / check in on for email and calendar invites • Need Skype open because not everyone uses Slack • GitLab is open in another tab I…
I want to add, I keep system monitor up 100% of the time.
My favorite application is Microsoft Outlook, which consistently takes up ~50% of my CPU on my 2015 maxed out Mac.
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#115I don't know why didn't just evolve irc. Feature wise slack doesn't really bring much new. It just has a good interface. If someone made an irc client as easy to use as slack then we'd have our answer.
"Feature wise slack doesn't really bring much new. It just has a good interface."
That's a pretty huge feature. Never underestimate how making something more usable increases it's popularity.
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#116Is that really happening that open source communities use Slack as their primary communications channel? I haven't seen that happening in the communities I participate in (Python/Django/...). What I do see is that more and more communities switch from IRC to Slack as the primary "sync" channel (while still maintaining mailing lists, bug trackers and the like). And as much as I hate it, the success can't be denied. Es…
On one large free software project, we adopted Mattermost (an open source / self-hosted equivalent of Slack). We went from ~12 active users and ~50 lesser active users, to ~ 100 active and ~ 500 lesser active users. I agree that more folks should consider moving away from IRC.
The sign-up process for Mattermost is easy. It's intuitive, cross-platform, mobile-friendly, etc. While we geeks are used to IRC, onboarding people to IRC is no different than any other product: the smallest glitch, weird UI, confusing elements will make people drop off pretty quickly. I have always had to sit down with someone to show them how to connect to IRC. We would waste time at code sprints showing people how to connect.
With Mattermost, we have unlimited logs (so we can cross-ref/permalink conversations in the issue trackers), threaded conversations (great for when the channel is noizy), emoji reactions (friendlier atmosphere), etc.
However, I agree with the article: Slack is inappropriate for open source communities. Mattermost and Rocket Chat are good alternatives. Between my IRC habits and what I can do with Mattermost, I find Slack very frustrating (and I don't use it anymore). Then again, as much as I like IRC, it's not an alternative either.
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#117Issue #2, that slack is based on synchronous communication, is something that is always ignored. Sometimes I log in to slack and see a conversation that I want to add something to, but it is 4 hours old with 50+ new messages on varying topics. Even with Slack's new threaded messages it is hard to evolve the conversation after all the synchronous folks have moved on to other topics.
What you're looking for is email. Multi-user chat simulates a real life conversation, and in real conversations it's also awkward to say "hey so going back to what we were talking about 15 minutes ago..." after the conversation has moved on.
No, email is terrible. There's no history. You can't "scroll up" to see what people were talking about. You can't link to another specific email to reference it (yes, there's archive services, but then you have to go dig through an archive to try to find a horridly formatted email to link to, which is completely separate from the normal consumption platform).
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're looking for is email. Multi-user chat simulates a real life conversation, and in real conversations it's also awkward to say "hey so going back to what we were talking about 15 minutes ago..." after the conversation has moved on.
No, email is terrible. There's no history. You can't "scroll up" to see what people were talking about. You can't link to another specific email to reference it (yes, there's archive services, but then you have to go dig through an archive to try to find a horridly formatted email to link to, which is completely separate from the normal consumption platform).
I actually argued here recently that email was hard to switch away from because of the history. You can keep your emails forever. I have emails from 2007 sitting in my inbox. And if I want to keep them, I can download them with IMAP or POP. If I send an email to five people and they remember to hit "reply all", well that's a conversation, isn't it? And if I need to show someone an email they weren't party to originally, I can forward it to them.
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It is one thing to deal with one of these things, but when you have to install ten to get The modern office large office is pretty bad in this respect. Really not uncommon to see things like • Need to have Slack open • Need to keep an eye on Basecamp/pm software • Need to have Outlook open / check in on for email and calendar invites • Need Skype open because not everyone uses Slack • GitLab is open in another tab I…
> I've started counting the minutes that I use in a day just logging in to things with our SSO, because it has started to actually add up, haha. It has gotten silly. If you need to log in more than once, can you really call it SSO? =)
If it's anything like my experience, the trip from clicking on the button to open the app and wait for the myriad of redirects, before clicking through to the page you actually want to monitor is non-trivial (and sometimes doesn't occur if the tab isn't in the foreground).
I don't have that many open, and it still takes me around 5 minutes every day to open them back up.
Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
#120Is that really happening that open source communities use Slack as their primary communications channel? I haven't seen that happening in the communities I participate in (Python/Django/...). What I do see is that more and more communities switch from IRC to Slack as the primary "sync" channel (while still maintaining mailing lists, bug trackers and the like). And as much as I hate it, the success can't be denied. Es…
Slack chat provides a number of nice features that IRC (at least out of the box... I know there have been attempts) does not. IRCCloud at least lets you see chat history, which IRC doesn't have out of the box but Slack does.
There's also TheLounge and ircanywhere which try to be FOSS IRCCloud