A lingering farewell to the username
api.slack.com
A lingering farewell to the username
1–10 of 94 posts
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#2Not only are they phasing out @username, they are removing the very simple /msg username – I now must type /msg @username and hit enter twice to initiate a DM. It's annoying.
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#3I don't fully understand what's changing: Slack always had the option to set a "real" name. Is it simply going to transparently translate the name token within messages to whatever preferred representation an organization choses? If so, why is this being presented as "the death of the username"? Or is it more complicated than this? (Perhaps an accommodation to integrate with existing directory systems in larger corporate environments?)
Does Slack feel like having usernames somewhat visible and end-user facing makes the product "too nerdy" for a general audience?
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#4what the heck? this is the stupidest move I've ever seen from Slack. Combine this with a lack of using floating windows (like Messenger on Android) and it's clear that the company is run by operations and sales --- not product. There is clear space to move in on Slack's terroritory
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#5I have no idea what the product manager was thinking here... Can someone elaborate why this "feature" - which implies potentially a lot of confusion - benefits most users?
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#6Why is this HN material? It's a Slack customer advisory.
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#7If I read this correctly, the "Enterprise Grid" section hints at one technical reason for this move. Slack recently announced[0] a new feature that allows multiple teams, err "Workspaces", to share a channel. This violates the uniqueness of @usernames within the namespace of the shared channel, e.g. both teams having a "@john".
This announcement anticipates (a) getting developers to use surrogate UIDs instead of @username for mentions, and (b) that their clients will only use display names in the future and rely on specific UI elements to distinguish ambiguous ones.
[0] https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/network-effects-gett...
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#8Please, make it possible to directly report or ban automated DM messages from bots/apps.
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#9Why is this HN material? It's a Slack customer advisory.
From a product perspective, it seems like a big decision and discussion about it may be insightful to those building other products.
From an engineering perspective, those who have Slack API integrations may be affected.
Re: A lingering farewell to the username
#10I didn't get it...
so how do I mention someone now? I still have to type @ for autocomplete, and even if I type the realy name [return] completes to @username...