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Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

status.slack.com

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Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#181

Post by 8ytecoder »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #136
jacquesc wrote: post #13

This backend outage reveals how horrible the Slack UI is implemented. You post a message.... you think it got sent. Then 1min later, it tells you it was not.

The concept is called 'optimistic updating' and the intent is to make the UI 'feel faster' by assuming a positive response from the back-end, and only reverting when things go awry. Given the vast majority of messaging attempts will complete successfully, it's easy to see why the interaction pattern is used. The converse is pessimistic rendering: waiting for the server response before updating the UI (and possibly sh…

Optimistic updating is when the message moves from the chat box into the conversion thread. It assumes that in most cases the message will be sent and it makes sense to update the UI. Usually though it’s accompanied by an indication of some kind to also show progress. If slack doesn’t indicate it in anyway that’s confusing.

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#182

Post by fivre »

arwineap wrote: post #123
rexreed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a heavy Slack user but I don't use threads. Threads seem like a confusing mess. Am I missing something not using Slack threads?

FWIW, I was also a threads nay-sayer but I've since seen the light Remember the irc support channels where conversations and problem/solution dialogs were constantly muxed with other conversations / dialogs? Imagine each question being a root message, and all of the dialog / suggestions / answers being in a thread. Also makes it super convenient for search. In addition to that I find that beyond a certain channel / D…

yes! I actually love that format! it's how I grew up!

I'll recognize that I'm a bit of an oddball in that respect nowadays, but it can work, at least with a small enough room. I love having all the conversations cross over one another and just being able to read back and follow them.

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#183

Post by joshuanapoli »

linsomniac wrote: post #179

"Uptime for current quarter: 99.97%" AFAICT, this outage has been going on 6 hours and is still showing a ton of services as "Incident" status in the slack status page. Seems like uptime could be more like 99.7% and dropping. But, how do out count downtime of a distributed system? We probably need a new way of discussing availability. An outage to part of your system might only impact one or a group of users, but to…

For simplicity, you could use the fraction of api calls that our service level objectives. Google/SRE calls it "aggregate availability". https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/embracing-r...

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#184

Post by ghostpepper »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #136
jacquesc wrote: post #13

This backend outage reveals how horrible the Slack UI is implemented. You post a message.... you think it got sent. Then 1min later, it tells you it was not.

The concept is called 'optimistic updating' and the intent is to make the UI 'feel faster' by assuming a positive response from the back-end, and only reverting when things go awry. Given the vast majority of messaging attempts will complete successfully, it's easy to see why the interaction pattern is used. The converse is pessimistic rendering: waiting for the server response before updating the UI (and possibly sh…

I wonder if this is why slack for iOS (not sure about Android) will load the notification badge from the server before loading the actual messages, so when those get out of sync the UI is essentially saying "Someone is trying to contact you but that's all I can tell you".

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#186

Post by ajpalkovic »

juvoni wrote: post #81
rexreed wrote: post #60

Is Discord a viable alternative to Slack? If not, why not?

Yes it is, but a key feature discord lacks is threads. Still it is a huge upgrade from Slack in terms of performance and ease of use.

fwiw, threads _are_ being worked on, but it will be a while still

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#187

Post by ghostpepper »

dimtion wrote: post #146
flavmartins wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially bad if you're on mobile and in an area that might have spotty reception. You post a message, it looks good, you move on. Then later on you come back to it and it was never sent.

The new Slack on mobile is absolutely unusable. There are no way to know if the interface is up to date, when was the last update or to force an update. The only way I found to know that your message has been received is to have an ack from your interlocutor.

My personal conspiracy theory is that Slack likes the way users "engage" with the mobile app when indicator badges don't clear right away. Often you will open the app because you see the badge, only to realize you've already read the message and the badge just hasn't cleared. They're hoping that you will then click something unrelated in the app, thus increasing "engagement".

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#188

Post by kevindong »

ifaxmycodetok8s wrote: post #122
rexreed wrote: post #60

Is Discord a viable alternative to Slack? If not, why not?

If you're question is it a viable alternative to Slack for business purposes, the answer is no. And it's not bc of anything related to the application itself but because of the insane TOS. > By uploading, distributing, transmitting or otherwise using Your Content with the Service, you grant to us a perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable, royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license to use, host, reproduce, modif…

> in connection with operating and providing the Service

I'm not a lawyer, but that seems like a key limiting clause in that statement.

Re: Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance

#189

Post by foxtr0t »

joshuanapoli wrote: post #183
linsomniac wrote: post #179

"Uptime for current quarter: 99.97%" AFAICT, this outage has been going on 6 hours and is still showing a ton of services as "Incident" status in the slack status page. Seems like uptime could be more like 99.7% and dropping. But, how do out count downtime of a distributed system? We probably need a new way of discussing availability. An outage to part of your system might only impact one or a group of users, but to…

For simplicity, you could use the fraction of api calls that our service level objectives. Google/SRE calls it "aggregate availability". https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/embracing-r...

Yeah, this problem has a pretty obvious solution that is implemented by many teams: find a unit of work that we can measure success and failure over, report an aggregate metric over a specified time interval for availability tracking and plotting:

# units successful / total # of units

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