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Unslacking Tideways Company

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Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#151

Post by Cthulhu_ »

andybak wrote: post #23
sdan wrote: post #7

Definitely agree with your decision. After leaving slack entirely from a robotics team and a science club, our productively increased. No longer were we going off topic wasting precious time and making everyone in the channel read every 500+ messages some people engaged in. We instead chose to make more plans during meetings and through direct chat (Messenger). However, Slack is usefull for forums such as donkeycar.s…

> where many hobbists come in and have questions on this software/hardware project I'm rather baffled by the use of chat for this kind of problem. (and I never clicked with IRC either) So - I've got a problem and I come to a chat channel. It's probably been asked before. If I'm lucky I'll find my answer in a searchable chat archive and I won't need to visit at all. Otherwise I face two options: 1. Scroll back and try…

Re: searching, I like Gitter for that - they have their chat history out in public, indexed by Google.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#152

Post by Cthulhu_ »

diminoten wrote: post #142
amiga-workbench wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structured threads vs an unending ticker tape of noise.

Why can't you have threads in a chat app? This article is really, "We couldn't adapt our processes to Slack, so we blamed the tool and replaced a chat app with processes, because we're special snowflakes and how could anything Not Invented Here apply to our totally unique problems of communication?" Sure, they ended up with a series of other tools to cover their workflows, the thing they "invented" was how those tool…

You can, but it's not the default; you need discipline and moderators to force people to thread conversations and structure their thread starters in such a way as to optimize for searching.

IMO just use forum software if you're going that way. Much more low volume, too (generally).

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#153

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gilbetron wrote: post #115
john_oshea wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations for sensible forum software? (self-hosted would be ideal)

Great question, and I'm eager to hear the results. We're going to try creating a private subreddit to test the idea of forums for "long form discussions". I used vBulletin back around the early 00s, and I loved it, but I've found a number of people don't "get" forums. Discourse is something else I'd like to try. I'm curious why people don't like forums for discussions.

We tried to move from vBulletin over to Discourse but it didn't work out; in comparison, Discourse is very complicated and heavy weight. I want to like it, but it's just as snappy.

Instead, we went for XenForo, made by the original vB developers. It's got just enough modern technology to make it a bit more pleasant, and it's super fast (faster than vB 3). Migrating vB to that was easy enough too (took a while, but faster than Discourse which needed three days for the basic import and then still had a million tasks to run in the background)

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#154

Post by lunchables »

jedberg wrote: post #14
dvtrn wrote: post #4

Slack makes this very difficult and at least for me, is a primary cause of anxiety and fear of missing out I unironically wonder how widespread this problem is among the specific group of people who blame their lack of productivity on Slack, or failing that, how many people would admit their FOMO is enhanced by chat apps. So many of the "productivity killing" problems I hear people griping about with Slack aren't rea…

> So many of the "productivity killing" problems I hear people griping about with Slack aren't really issues with slack, They're not specific to Slack, but they are specific to the existence of an official real time chat app. The boss expects you to read the chat, and if you just ignore it, you'll get in trouble and be deemed "irresponsible" if you aren't acting on it and participating in it.

I think this implicit assumption of how to use Slack is the problem. The only thing that we expect someone to respond to on Slack is an @ or a dm. Anything else is analogous to a conversation that happened in a room you either weren't in, or had your headphones on. An @ is like someone walking over and tapping you and asking you to take your headphones off and join the conversation and a dm is like walking into your office and asking you something.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#155

Post by bovermyer »

andybak wrote: post #23
sdan wrote: post #7

Definitely agree with your decision. After leaving slack entirely from a robotics team and a science club, our productively increased. No longer were we going off topic wasting precious time and making everyone in the channel read every 500+ messages some people engaged in. We instead chose to make more plans during meetings and through direct chat (Messenger). However, Slack is usefull for forums such as donkeycar.s…

> where many hobbists come in and have questions on this software/hardware project I'm rather baffled by the use of chat for this kind of problem. (and I never clicked with IRC either) So - I've got a problem and I come to a chat channel. It's probably been asked before. If I'm lucky I'll find my answer in a searchable chat archive and I won't need to visit at all. Otherwise I face two options: 1. Scroll back and try…

I think forums are a better solution for this kind of problem.

However, forums suffer from two crippling problems: 1. It's really hard to find active forums (discoverability), and 2. Forums are often overwhelmed with spam and security problems (integrity).

If those two problems could be solved, or at least mitigated better, then forums might make a comeback.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#156

Post by ecto »

gilbetron wrote: post #115
john_oshea wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations for sensible forum software? (self-hosted would be ideal)

Great question, and I'm eager to hear the results. We're going to try creating a private subreddit to test the idea of forums for "long form discussions". I used vBulletin back around the early 00s, and I loved it, but I've found a number of people don't "get" forums. Discourse is something else I'd like to try. I'm curious why people don't like forums for discussions.

We're working on something like subreddits - but just for your community - at https://threadbase.io

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#157

Post by beaconstudios »

paulie_a wrote: post #147
Jedd wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And sidenote I am not sure where term "ping you" came from, but it needs to go away. It honestly conveys the message I don't need to or want to talk to the person that said it. It's weird, isn't it. We all have our triggers, I suppose. For example, I assume anyone who explicitly qualifies only a small number of their comments with 'tbh' or 'Honestly...' is lying to me the rest of the time.

My trigger is unnecessary shorthand that leads to inefective communication. Short hand can be used at times, but it should be limited and the context will make it clear. And honestly I instantly hate anyone that messages "ty" instead of actually spelling out thank you.

that seems... extreme.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#158

Post by paulie_a »

beaconstudios wrote: post #157
paulie_a wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My trigger is unnecessary shorthand that leads to inefective communication. Short hand can be used at times, but it should be limited and the context will make it clear. And honestly I instantly hate anyone that messages "ty" instead of actually spelling out thank you.

that seems... extreme.

People shouldn't need to look up lingo to find out what it means constantly. Plus if a person can't spend the effort to spell out thank you. It really decreases the thank you.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#159

Post by ekanes »

sdan wrote: post #7

Definitely agree with your decision. After leaving slack entirely from a robotics team and a science club, our productively increased. No longer were we going off topic wasting precious time and making everyone in the channel read every 500+ messages some people engaged in. We instead chose to make more plans during meetings and through direct chat (Messenger). However, Slack is usefull for forums such as donkeycar.s…

Slack's value isn't communication efficiency. It's value is in enabling people to feel more part of a team. It's a culture tool as much as a communication tool.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#160

Post by diminoten »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #152
diminoten wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you have threads in a chat app? This article is really, "We couldn't adapt our processes to Slack, so we blamed the tool and replaced a chat app with processes, because we're special snowflakes and how could anything Not Invented Here apply to our totally unique problems of communication?" Sure, they ended up with a series of other tools to cover their workflows, the thing they "invented" was how those tool…

You can, but it's not the default; you need discipline and moderators to force people to thread conversations and structure their thread starters in such a way as to optimize for searching. IMO just use forum software if you're going that way. Much more low volume, too (generally).

You don't need moderators, just policy. Where I work we have threaded conversations and no one needs to moderate anything.

Further, "optimize for searching" isn't a thing. Teams gives full text search, and you can find any word or phrase you need to instantly.

I think you're optimizing for familiarity.

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