They talk about threads and asynchronous flow as being key attributes that make email better than Slack. I'm sorry, but those are both possible with Slack. I've replied to old messages long after they were sent and they're often in message threads. All the problems they claim Slack has, I think email has them too. I'd rather have those problems in Slack than email. Actually, I'd rather have them in Mattermost now these days. ;)
Slack channels are a waste of time
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#12Maybe Slack already has this feature (I haven't used it in a couple of years), but it would be great if we could personally "downvote" users that have an unsatisfactory signal:noise ratio, and their comments would fade into the background colour of the page (like HN does with downvoted comments). Or use a decreasing font size or something to show me that I consider their input less important in general. This would only apply to messages shown to me, it wouldn't impact what other users saw.
One of the problems I had with Slack was people with only a tangential relationship with the channel filling it up with irrelevant noise. Something like that would help me filter it out a bit.
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#13Named threads is a cool idea, but if it makes a big difference I expect we will see it in Slack soon enough... If you build a challenger SaaS based on minor feature tweaks, you risk just doing product research for the better staffed incumbent.
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#14You do not need to read your entire slack channel history. Personally, I simply scan for messages addressed to me with an @mention or @channel. If there's no @mention, I load the channel, press the escape key and go on with my day.
Indeed, the only thing I actively watch are direct messages, everything else I check periodically through the "unread messages" area at the top with a quick "mark all as read".
For you and your parent comment: Shift+Esc will mark _all_ messages as read - no need to waste time going to each channel that has new messages!
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#15We tried Zulip but it is a lot more work to use than Slack/Flowdock. I really like the Slack/Flowdock UI better. So we stopped using Zulip.
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#16Maybe Slack already has this feature (I haven't used it in a couple of years), but it would be great if we could personally "downvote" users that have an unsatisfactory signal:noise ratio, and their comments would fade into the background colour of the page (like HN does with downvoted comments). Or use a decreasing font size or something to show me that I consider their input less important in general. This would on…
Well Slack is typically used for work so it's probably not a widespread problem but one thing you could do is open a #random channel so people can post all the noise there.
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#17Half my time in Slack is just banter and gifs, the other half is skimming discussions that would've been a meeting otherwise. I think the time I waste chit chatting about cancels out the time I've saved from emails, meetings, briefings, and forced context switching from shoulder tapping. From a productively standpoint, it's neither a gain or loss. But the real win for Slack (but also shared with email and tickets) is…
The first problem is actually easy to fix -- make it a rule that anyone that sends unrelated gifs/makes funny banter gets to buy lunch for the others ;-) (or makes a charitable donation in proportion to the number of people -- if the users are geographically dispersed). And enforce it strictly. You'll find that your slack channel is automatically devoid of unnecessary chatter...something about having to buy lunch for colleagues brings out the miser in them :-).
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#18Honestly, this read so much like desperate marketing. You're making baseless claims. "Senior people rarely use Slack channels". Care to back that up with some facts please?
It takes away from everything the product is trying to do by focusing so intently on misguided flaws of the competitor product. It's like those Galaxy vs iPhone ads.
Make the product better.
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#19Switch to IRC, you won't regret it. Two points concerning the post. IRC is "senior-friendly" and you won't have that GIF problem as it's text-only.
Re: Slack channels are a waste of time
#20You do not need to read your entire slack channel history. Personally, I simply scan for messages addressed to me with an @mention or @channel. If there's no @mention, I load the channel, press the escape key and go on with my day.
> You do not need to read your entire slack channel history.
Nope. But you sure as hell search it.... comes in handy to see if something has been discussed before.