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Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

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

#181
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?

I think he's trying to imply that the stereotype exists for a reason, that deep thinking requires isolation from distraction.

For a more concrete example, you can look to what Richard Hamming had to say about the topic. He noticed a similar phenomenon at bell labs, where there was a difference big difference between people who worked with their doors open, and those who worked with them closed.

The door closed people were much more productive than the closed door people. Of course, he noticed there was a tradeoff there, and saw that the closed door people tended to not be as relevant years later as the open door people.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming

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

#182

Slack reminds me of my school years, I grew up as cell phones became commonplace. We've always had chat software, but mostly we talked to each other during breaks or after school using our desktop computers. Then cell phones became normal, and SMS was normal, later on, it was chat apps, social media. Things sped up by a factor of a billion. All of the sudden we have entire conversations happening as the teacher is le…

Yeah, I cry for my young children. I have no idea how to prepare them for the hell that is the always connected life. I have no idea how to teach them, that most of it is noise, and that being purposely unavailable is essential for mental health, let alone productivity, even if it feels like you've missed vital social interactions while away.

Maybe it'll work itself out, and they'll naturally adapt. I just suspect it's totally antithetical to the human condition to constantly be available to respond to people, and psychologically we're not adapted to fight the urge.

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

#183
post #7

I like it. I've been thinking for a while that old-school forums are actually fundamentally superior to chatrooms for sharing important information and having in depth discussions. In my opinion the chat model is simply bad for effectively distributing useful information because it disappears in the noise. Perhaps what's needed is a combination of the forum-style threaded conversation model for information sharing an…

I think the same thing. I had a hell of a time trying to move a company from Slack to Discourse though. People really love the UI/UX of Slack, even more than they hate the information overload.

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

#184

Curious question: Isn't this an already solved problem? I've been using plain old emails and quiet free of all the problems of real-time messaging. "Thread-first communication" - We have it. Email threads. I've been using Zoho Mail. It's one step ahead and has modern concepts like streams/commenting and sharing built around emails. Very useful. "Truly transparent conversations" - What this means is, the knowledge has…

Email is also universal. Using Twist or some other app means you have to onboard and train a customer onto a new platform to even start talking with them. There are some cases where you can replace email with Twist (formalized team communications), but there are way more uses for email.

The downside here is an email thread with 5+ people replying daily will quickly become unmanageable. If a single participant forgets to "Reply All" then the conversation can bifurcate again and again.

If I was managing a team of 5+ people I might use Twist. I would more likely onboard everyone onto existing project management software. Where the team can have threaded conversations, but also relate those convos to tasks, milestones, files, and other project info.

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

#185
post #159
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> I also believe Twitter should have been an RFC, not a startup. I have this reaction to _so many_ online services these days.

It would be fun to actually write the RFCs for those services. Besides, perhaps they could trigger open source and federated alternatives.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that instead of having to check every single one of my dozens of muted channels once or twice a day, I'd like them to be highlighted in the sidebar (but not badged!) when unread. Plus it'd be nice to still get notifications of mentions and highlight words in said channels.

By hiding the ones with unused messages you implicitly tell which ones have new messages because those are the only ones that are visible. It works quite well and enabled me to passively track dozens of channels without being overwhelmed. As to mentions and highlight words, I don't think there's a solution for that for muted channels. When I developed this technique I would have liked targetted mentions, but not @her…

But then if you want to start a conversation in a channel with no unreads, you have to go digging for it.

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

#187
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last company I worked for had an IBM fanboy as CEO who wanted to do all internal communication with IBM tools. Domino, Notes, Sametime. I think these were the worst tools I ever had to use in my whole career. Even after they rewrote the UI with Eclipse later.

Yeah, Notes is basically written in the Lotus 123 spreadsheet scripting language :-) Eclipse just made it worse. Obligatory http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/ The one positive comment I can make is that you did end up with a unified enterprise-wide set of collaboration tools. Oh there was a new tool I hated before IBM decided to get on the git bandwagon: Rational Team Concert- project management and source control tied…

ClearCase I think (I have not used rational team concert) infinitely worse than RTC.

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

#188

How is Twist (the product they announce in this post) much different from email? Besides not using open protocols? Don't get me wrong, it looks like a beautifully designed email client. There are some interesting features here but it seems like you could do this all using existing email features. Am I wrong? The choice of asynchronhous vs. synchronous is a false dichotomy. Development teams I have been on use a combi…

It keeps the idea of channels from Slack.

These channel designations are shared by everyone who uses Twist.

Email organization is different for each person.

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

#189

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…

The vast majority of my usage of tools like Slack, as well as my teams's usage, would fall under the response paradigm you described above. Maybe it's because we're remote workers and we appreciate the fact that we don't have to engage in silly political games like the one you mentioned in the reaction scenario.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using Slack as a one-line-at-a-time chat service is a choice that a user makes. Slack itself doesn't enforce it. Thats like saying you can drive your car with your feet, the car doesn't enforce driving by hands. The point of this post is saying that slack has these shortcoming by the nature of its design. You can make as many arguments as you want defending it, but everything has a design that influences usage.

Thats like saying you can drive your car with your feet, the car doesn't enforce driving by hands. That's a slightly odd analogy, but let's go with it. You're right that you can drive a car in ways that are dangerous, and the car doesn't enforce safe driving. The law is what enforces the way you drive (by punishing you for driving dangerously). This is exactly the same as company rules to ensure Slack is used properl…

But that's one of the hallmarks of poor design, having to create rules to accommodate for a tool's dysfunctionality.
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