Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#121

Post by dcosson » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 3:46 PM UTC

hfauq wrote: post #63

onion2k wrote: post #11

A small, but impactful design choice we made in creating Twist was to leave out the online presence indicator. I imagine you could address this in Slack by just having everyone set themselves to 'Away' by default. One of the things that I've found useful in Slack is turning off the "Someone is typing" message (the option is in the Display Options). I used to wait for someone to post if I knew a message was coming. No…

The online presence indicator is one of the problems created by Slack. Using real-time chat is the actual problem, whether it's Slack or Hipchat, or anything alike. Real-time is great sometime, but I don't think you should use it all the time: - Real-time chat happens quickly — one line at a time — discouraging full, thoughtful conversations. - Topics are all jumbled together in a channel so it’s nearly impossible to…

If people are making big, irreversible decisions in real-time on slack without a lot of deliberation, that does sound like a problem, but it hardly seems like slack's fault. The same thing could happen over email via several quick replies, or just in person with whoever happens to be nearby and not wearing headphones.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#122

Post by forgottenpass » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

tzakrajs wrote: post #113

hfauq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The online presence indicator is one of the problems created by Slack. Using real-time chat is the actual problem, whether it's Slack or Hipchat, or anything alike. Real-time is great sometime, but I don't think you should use it all the time: - Real-time chat happens quickly — one line at a time — discouraging full, thoughtful conversations. - Topics are all jumbled together in a channel so it’s nearly impossible to…

Sounds like a personnel issue more than a chat client problem.

The medium is the message.

Do you want to spend time training workflow and enforcing best practices, or a tool designed around desired workflow?

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#123

Post by tzs » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

There is a reason Jedi masters, powerful witches and wizards, ancient wise men and women, and so on tend to be found on isolated mountains, in remote caves, wandering in far away forests, and the like instead of living in the middle of the village with their doors open.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#124

Post by flavor8 » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 3:52 PM UTC

I'd like to see:

a) Built in reminders (I don't want to sign up to todoist also)

b) Post formatting

c) Ability to mute threads

d) Polls?

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#125

Post by angry_octet » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #73

amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you kind of ended up with e-mail :)

Usenet news. 1. You enter groups devoted to large topics (like "all company" or "software development" or maybe "Smith Project") 2. You see conversations delimited by subject lines, completely threaded, with full history. 3. You normally reply to a message with another message, quoting or not, and your message is threaded in. 4. The tools are good for showing you what you haven't read yet. 5. You can ignore a topic f…

There are internal message board systems in Microsoft shops (i.e. Sitrion on SharePoint) that struggle to achieve 2,3,4,5,6,7,9. Despite beefy servers and huge $$$, still slow and lame.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#126

Post by _jal » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #73

amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you kind of ended up with e-mail :)

Usenet news. 1. You enter groups devoted to large topics (like "all company" or "software development" or maybe "Smith Project") 2. You see conversations delimited by subject lines, completely threaded, with full history. 3. You normally reply to a message with another message, quoting or not, and your message is threaded in. 4. The tools are good for showing you what you haven't read yet. 5. You can ignore a topic f…

Yep. That was exactly my thought.

Everything old is new again. (And Usenet is even still there.)

I'm still convinced that Usenet gets ignored precisely because it is federated and mature - it is harder to extract nickels from than a centralized service; user-surveillance and other ad-related choke points are fragmented, it works already, there are already robust end-user filters.

(I also believe Twitter should have been an RFC, not a startup.)

For anyone who wants to build similar stuff for internal use - NNTP is probably not going to be the right choice unless you have a large number of sites. For a startup, IMAP has everything you need built-in for shared, threaded group messaging that looks a fair-bit like usenet (from the client's perspective). If you don't have strong ideas about UI or workflow, you can use an MTA to read and respond, and you're done. If you want your own UI, there are a huge number of IMAP libraries out there for just about any language you want to use.

"Old" tech is a goldmine.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#127

Post by nougatine » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #123

There is a reason Jedi masters, powerful witches and wizards, ancient wise men and women, and so on tend to be found on isolated mountains, in remote caves, wandering in far away forests, and the like instead of living in the middle of the village with their doors open.

How are fictional characters and entities even remotely relevant to the article?

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#128

Post by Jtsummers » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #94

SyneRyder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My smart watch ... spams me mercilessly until I block apps and if I block enough apps I may as well have a cheap dumb watch. Definitely block the spammy apps. It makes a huge different to the smartwatch experience if it's only buzzing for things that really are urgent. Once you tune the notifications, it's actually calming - not only because you're not being interrupted as often, but also because you're not constan…

To me, that doesn't make much sense; the whole point of a smartwatch seems to be making the reading of notifications more efficient and unobtrusive. If you disable all except the rare urgent ones, what's the point of the smartwatch?

Notifications are inherently intrusive. You have to pare it down to the set of notifications you care about most so that you aren't constantly interrupted. I made the mistake, recently, of letting the News app on iOS notify me, no sound but near constant visual noise when some big news item comes up. All I care about is: chats and calls from girlfriend, family, friends (in that order), a couple chess games, calendar/todo notifications to keep me on schedule (particularly on busy days). Everything else, I can check at my leisure. If I had a smartwatch, it'd be convenient to have those on my wrist. But I certainly wouldn't want all those news notifications there, though I may still want them on my iPhone or iPad.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#129

Post by pythonaut_16 » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #105

gengkev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may seem like a little thing, but you have to be very careful while typing not to accidentally press Enter. I've found this to be surprisingly difficult, and it makes typing a lot more stressful.

For a while gmail had this ui "feature" where or string-of-characters would send an email without prompting. I still fear the web UI. I guess emailing out bullet lists was against the implicit use case the gmail UI team had in mind. Stuff like this definitely changes how tools are used.

In the case of Gmail (and most email systems really) I always start out by putting my own address in the To: field. That way if I accidentally send it will just come back to me. It can also be useful because I can first send the email to myself to double check the way it will look on the receiving end before sending it to the actual recipient.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#130

Post by kakarot » Mon, Jun 19, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

TheRealmccoy wrote: post #100

mediocrejoker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of react vs respond. I wonder if you could explain a bit of what it means?

Event: Your boss shares an article on @channel at Slack. Reaction:: Since our boss has posted it and you don't want to be seemed a second rung player and the one who is NOT on her/his toes, you jump on the keyboard and first "Like/Thumbs Up" that post and then comment for the heck of it, something like "Wow", Amazing", "Insightful". Then you look over your back ie, to see how many others have commented before you, an…

Maybe some people on the corporate ladder are like this, but I just can't imagine giving a damn about making sure I see the latest article my boss has posted to Slack. I have work to do so that I can clock out and work on my own things. If bossman wants me to see something he better just email or text me.

Slack has its pros and cons, but these are largely the same pros and cons as any instant group communication platform. If one is depending on Slack too heavily for non work-related content then they have separate issues that need dealing with.