Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

Post by shultays » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

aivosha wrote: post #694

It's fascinating to see how tools turn into environment people wanna live in. Its a god damn tool, dont commit your lives to it. Use it, abuse it, it doesnt work - toss it.

Post by grumple » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #117

guessmyname wrote: post #46

This is funny because I work across the street of Slack’s office in Vancouver, Canada and two Slack engineers who I frequently chat with during our daily commute already told me they —and a handful of other employees— hate the WYSIWYG input box too, but were afraid to express their feelings because their role is irrelevant compared to the people who made the decision to ship it.

Bad sign. If the rank and file are afraid to give honest internal feedback, they have a management problem. At least for me, that's a time-to-leave signal.

Post by conradfr » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

greggman2 wrote: post #474

Plyphon_ wrote: post #464

In their defence (not the defence of the WYSIWYG box itself) - they quite likely have done lots of user testing that has shown clear desirability, improved value to user, improved usability, etc etc. You have to remember Slack's target persona is probably no longer the Engineer (If it ever was) - it's more likely a much less tech-savvy employee who finds WYSIWYG editors very handy to create rich text inputs. I guess…

> they quite likely have done lots of user testing that has shown clear desirability, improved value to user, improved usability I have never worked at a company that did user testing or if they did it was always done in a way or interpreted in a way to back up the designer's opinion. I don't think I've once in my entire 40 yr career seen a designer test with users, find out something was bad, and change their design…

Post by imglorp » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

nmec wrote: post #701

jsjohnst wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve already put my money where my mouth is and sent an email saying I intend to cancel all future payments to Slack unless they give the option to disable it, I suggest everyone else does the same.

I expressed my discontent to them as well and just received this reply: "I'm afraid there is no way to disable this at the moment, and it's not in the roadmap to roll back on this feature. That said, we're still in the initial stages here, so our focus right now is listening to feedback as we consider certain changes for improvement as we move forward. You've raised some fair points here, so I've shared your feedback…

Post by CloudNetworking » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

SubuSS wrote: post #700

niutech wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another argument against using proprietary SaaS solutions for such crucial purposes as business communication. There are free open source alternatives which give you full control and privacy: Mattermost, Riot.im, Rocket.chat, Let's Chat.

We shouldn't fetishize control as much. In >15 years what I have seen is that OSS comes with a huge cost of attention - that you'd be better off focusing on your business need. Running most of these OSS even at a medium employee count scale is a full-team-commit-nightmare. It essentially means your it department now needs a specialist who will be able to handle your org quirks, remember the tweaks and keep baby sitti…