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How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

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Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#81

Post by freehunter »

dewey wrote: post #73
getrendevu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the alternative is posting important information to a feed that intelligently updates itself, rather than into channels where it gets pushed above the fold. We're building this at Rendevu ( https://rendevu.co ) and running an alpha right now, feel free to check it out.

> where it gets pushed above the fold Isn't this where the Slack search comes in? I never had the problem that I couldn't find something that I was looking for. Usually I just need one distinct word that I know was used in the conversation and a from:person filter. A feed has the same problem that it'll get too big and things will get pushed above the fold.

People praise Slack search so much but I've found it to be just awful. Maybe it's because my Slack organization has tens of thousands of people in it with thousands of channels, but if I don't know the person who said the thing, it's going to be impossible to find.

A simple "only search in channels I am a member of and don't have muted" would go a long way towards making Slack search better. As is, I wouldn't call Slack search great or even good as I often hear from other people. I would just merely say that Slack does have search, just as a statement of fact. And then I would change the subject.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#82

Post by isostatic »

gnu8 wrote: post #48

No one should be using slack at all. I understand that it fills use cases that email and irc don’t, but that is no excuse for letting all of your communications be owned by some other company. What if slack accidentally or deliberately denies access to your data? What if they choose to use it for their own purposes or disclose it to some third party? What if they get hacked by Russia?

Losing communication is a pain, you'd have a couple of weeks of pain while you moved to using email or IRC or phone or whatever.

What happens if AWS gets hacked by Russia? Or use your stuff for their own purposes? How many people -- especially startups -- throw all their eggs in the AWS basket, rather than building a system that runs across multiple VPSes from multiple providers.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#83

Post by gsich »

dewey wrote: post #72
gsich wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC gateway from Slack. But they closed it down because .

I also prefer IRC but in this case it doesn't really improve anything. The opposite really, no build-in search, no easy onboarding, no central logs,... (Yes, I know I can build all this with ZNC, ELK or by using IRC cloud but that doesn't solve the issue about chat vs. some other system)

But in Slacks case, that would all be there. With IRC.

But that's in the past. Slack is now a company with a single purpose (chat) and they can't even do that right. Just look at the bloated "application" (browser).

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#84

Post by getrendevu »

matchbok wrote: post #80
getrendevu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Rendevu ( https://rendevu.co ), we think the problem you're describing is due to Slack's (or any messaging app's) inherent synchronous nature. We're building an intelligent asynchronous feed that aggregates discussions from all the other apps you already use (google / jira / trello / invision), and gives your team a one stop place to find info that doesn't go stale like a wiki. We're running an alpha right now at…

oof, that looks nice! Gonna poke around. Your note about the synchronicity is spot on.

great! let me know if you have any questions, emails in my profile

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#85

Post by e40 »

gsich wrote: post #59
e40 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to use Skype because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping_b... I also remember a ToS change that allowed MS to listen in for quality control purposes .

The same problem exists in Slack, there is no E2E-encryption. And you can't self host it.

Agreed. Hopefully they will add this. I'm currently betting on the fact that Slack is small and it's less likely that the NSA has a direct backdoor into their systems. I would bet a lot of money that the NSA has a backdoor directly into MS Skype servers. I even hypothesized that they paid MS to purchase Skype from Ebay, because right after the sale MS changed from peer-to-peer to client-server.

Didn't the Snowden leaks say that Skype had been used to track terrorists?

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#86

Post by gsich »

e40 wrote: post #85
gsich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same problem exists in Slack, there is no E2E-encryption. And you can't self host it.

Agreed. Hopefully they will add this. I'm currently betting on the fact that Slack is small and it's less likely that the NSA has a direct backdoor into their systems. I would bet a lot of money that the NSA has a backdoor directly into MS Skype servers. I even hypothesized that they paid MS to purchase Skype from Ebay, because right after the sale MS changed from peer-to-peer to client-server. Didn't the Snowden lea…

The official reason is that "search would not work", but I don't know if this argument holds. Others can do search too. There is no need to search serverside when you have all messages on the client too.

By judging their client application, I doubt the serverside looks much better, so a direct backdoor might not even be needed.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#87

Post by jorams »

bachmeier wrote: post #11

It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service. Well that's what it is. Why not use email for the beefier conversations that don't need to take place right away, and use chat for what it was intended? Chat is great for the occasional situation where you want to have a conversation about something, you'll have a bunch of short messages back and forth, and you want…

> It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service.

I think these posts tend to emphasize that you should use Slack more like IRC. IRC is generally treated as asynchronous. Channels have tens, hundreds or thousands of people idling in them, and you can talk to those people, but you don't know when they'll talk back.

Those messages may turn into real time conversations very easily, but they don't have to.

That's also why channels are so important. You can ask a bunch of people with knowledge on the topic a question, and someone will probably respond somewhat soon. And if they take a while, you should be right there idling to receive answers even while you aren't available.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#88

Post by philsnow »

city41 wrote: post #62
matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

Why not use a thread in the channel? To be fair Slacks' thread implementation is rather poor, but it's better than nothing.

it's better _for slack_ than nothing.

having that feature, as poorly-implemented as it is [0], ticks a box for some orgs that will keep them using slack instead of investigating other chat setups.

[0] to slack's credit, threads are (very) slowly getting (a little bit) better. My list of a dozen or so things that I hate about threads got one of the issues fixed sometime in the last few months.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#90

Post by matchbok »

dewey wrote: post #56
matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

What's the alternative though? I really don't like Slack but I don't see another great way of doing it. - Face to Face: No record, even harder to give to someone - Wiki: Goes stale pretty quickly - E-Mail: Same problem, slower, as distracting as Slack

I think email being slower is kind of a benefit. The synchronous nature of slack just isn't really needed 99% of the time, at least at my job.

Chat is inherently a bad tool to use for planning a project across multiple days/groups. For me, it excels at casual banter, which is what most slack channels usually devolve into. The real work turns into "Can you email that?".

:/

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