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Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

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Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#431

Post by Arathorn »

arp242 wrote: post #423
bmarkovic wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this industry turned to a proprietary low-quality solution like Slack when Riot/Matrix have already existed tells the full story about what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all are. Everyone frustrated with the new Slack input box deserves what they got. Me included.

The reason for Slack's success is probably because it's a "turn key solution": you register your company, invite your employees, enter your CC, and you're good to go. With a lot of these open solutions things are more complex. I think we should really focus on providing a good UX here if we want more adoption. (also, I don't know if Riot is that much better; opening https://riot.im/app/ makes Firefox use 100% CPU and…

https://modular.im gives a turnkey hosting solution for Riot/Matrix for what it’s worth.

Riot should be lighter weight than Slack, but launch (particularly if you haven’t used it in ages) can be slow, plus we’re chasing a startup perf regression on firefox atm. The main reason Riot’s better is that you can use your own server, participate in an open network, and have control over the software if some feature gets pushed out that you dislike. And you get E2E encryption :)

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#432

Post by ako »

nizmow wrote: post #426
ako wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack probably has statistics which indicate that by now their largest user group is non-techies. And i'm assuming that if you look at paying customers, the amount of non-technies is probably even larger. People who are probably not even aware of this thing called markdown. So if you need to increase revenue replacing markdown with wysiwyg will make sense to UX and product management.

Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread. Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.

Yes, and most of us would do the same thing running a product, if it means more profits. Optimizing for Shareholder value...

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#433

Post by GhostVII »

aero142 wrote: post #250
ajkjk wrote: post #47

The funny thing is that I am sure most of the people who work at slack know it's terrible, but no one asks them. There is a small cohort of product managers who probably have a plausible-sounding reason to do it, and they need to do something to justify their jobs, so they alienate everybody else because no one stops them. I am, to put it lightly, familiar with this in other companies.

I would bet a lot of money I already know the pitch. It's the same one that the Confluence PM I'm sure made. "We have done very well selling to technical programmers and hip startups, but the market is so much bigger. shows Office 365 revenue numbers vs Slack revenue numbers . We have an opportunity to take this to the next level. We need to make this the goto office communication platform. cheers . Markdown may seem…

And they probably aren't wrong either. Even at companies made of mostly programmers, those people aren't necessarily the ones making the decision about which communication platform to use.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#434

Post by kqr »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #425
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. No. This really breaks up the flow of the text. I’m sure it’s fine for org-mode’s intended audience, but for people not from a coding background, it’s horrid. And there’s no need to “teach WYSIWYG users Markdown” when WYSIWYG is fine for them.

It could remove the Markdown once the message has been sent, and only show it in editing mode. Then readers wouldn't have their flow disturbed, and authors could edit their messages in a sane way.

This is the obvious way to do it, and also how Slack used to do it before this WYSIWYG thing at least.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#435

Post by marcus_holmes »

nizmow wrote: post #426
ako wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack probably has statistics which indicate that by now their largest user group is non-techies. And i'm assuming that if you look at paying customers, the amount of non-technies is probably even larger. People who are probably not even aware of this thing called markdown. So if you need to increase revenue replacing markdown with wysiwyg will make sense to UX and product management.

Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread. Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.

Which is fine, because we'll go on to discover a newer, better, competitor.

Well, actually more like 3 newer, better, competitors.

And then we'll have endless arguments and religious wars about which newer, better, competitor is the best.

But we seem to enjoy that, so all good I guess. Go team Geek :)

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#437

Post by hanspeter »

wpietri wrote: post #289
baby wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this ladies and gentlemen is the over reaction of the year!

Not at all. Why stay at a place that doesn't value your ability to think? Or, worse, doesn't value the thoughts of anybody below a certain rank? Not only is that a miserable experience, but I think it's also a recipe for a product that only gets worse.

> Why stay at a place that doesn't value your ability to think? Or, worse, doesn't value the thoughts of anybody below a certain rank?

That's the over reaction part. The fact that two engineers feels uncomfortable expressing their feelings, says very little about the culture or values in their company.

It could be that they are just too introverted or insecure to speak up about most things, or that they have a good relationship with the fellow engineers in that other team, and don't feel like ruining it by telling them, that their contributions to the product sucks.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#438

Post by buboard »

arp242 wrote: post #423
bmarkovic wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this industry turned to a proprietary low-quality solution like Slack when Riot/Matrix have already existed tells the full story about what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all are. Everyone frustrated with the new Slack input box deserves what they got. Me included.

The reason for Slack's success is probably because it's a "turn key solution": you register your company, invite your employees, enter your CC, and you're good to go. With a lot of these open solutions things are more complex. I think we should really focus on providing a good UX here if we want more adoption. (also, I don't know if Riot is that much better; opening https://riot.im/app/ makes Firefox use 100% CPU and…

> solutions things are more complex

it's kinda sad that it has come to be that tech companies will consider installing matrix "complex".

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#439

Post by TeMPOraL »

ako wrote: post #432
nizmow wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread. Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.

Yes, and most of us would do the same thing running a product, if it means more profits. Optimizing for Shareholder value...

What happened to self-respect and the desire to provide a quality profit that makes people's life better?

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#440

Post by brazzledazzle »

ako wrote: post #432
nizmow wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread. Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.

Yes, and most of us would do the same thing running a product, if it means more profits. Optimizing for Shareholder value...

I'd do it for a boatload of cash but not any less. Your core tech users are still selling your product for you, free of charge. Unless it's abuse/fraud/security mitigation there's usually a way to keep your technical customers happy along with your new user base. It obviously has a cost but if you're making dramatic changes that alienate your early adopters I'm sure that those changes are going to do some needle moving in terms of increasing your profits. No one would do something like that on a whim...

That cost does need to stay within reason though. And something crazy like maintaining divergent architectures/infrastructure isn't really reasonable either. But on the bright side the technical folks might be understanding of these sorts of tradeoffs.

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