If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room • Hacker News Board

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#301

Post by Joe_Cool » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #93

jcrawfordor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Thunderbird user, but I don't really think that there's a clear winner in that comparison. Outlook has features that Thunderbird has been missing for over a decade, like reliable send-in-background (and other database operations in background unlike Thunderbird that likes to interrupt you to ask permission) and a far more mature calendar product.

Not to mention replies listed in threads. You have to move sent messages to the inbox to get this to behave correctly in TB.

Right click -> open message in conversation

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#302

Post by twobitshifter » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

tabbott wrote: post #139

legerdemain wrote: post #25

The problem with "trying it with my team for one sprint" is that I now need to have a long conversation with legal. How will the service provider handle the content (discussions, screenshots, code snippets) that my team will upload? Do our current customer contracts contain any clauses that complicate the use of external discussion sites? In the unlikely event that the service offers the option to host it locally --…

Slack and all its clones are based on the chat room model, which structurally has the problem described in this article (and many others for productivity, such as wasting attention). Fundamentally, the chatroom model pioneered by IRC is poor for asynchronous communication because you can't sustain temporally overlapping conversations in a channel. However, you can't "just use email" -- Email's threading model is grea…

Zulip sounds a lot like a modernized bulletin board/forum. It’s interesting how we keep coming back to the same ideas again and again.

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#303

Post by duckmysick » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #179

ogre_codes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just fucking use email. I get you. But also: - Email doesn't retain context very well. If I dig back through my email I might have all of the emails in a thread, or maybe not. - Likewise, I can't send someone a link to a previous emailed conversation so it makes for poor documentation. I can forward an individual email, but not the comment in context. - Email is not easy to index or post up for reference. You can't…

I've commented this too much in this thread, but it's important: Zulip solves all this, has other advantages and a fast and extremely usable interface.

Is there anything in particular you don't like about Zulip?

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#304

Post by StavrosK » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

duckmysick wrote: post #303

StavrosK wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've commented this too much in this thread, but it's important: Zulip solves all this, has other advantages and a fast and extremely usable interface.

Is there anything in particular you don't like about Zulip?

The UI looks a bit outdated, but it's so fast and usable that I don't mind the aesthetics at all. It had some annoyances like the inability to move topics, bit AFAIK they solved that with the latest release.

There isn't really much else I don't like about it, I never stop being amazed by how great the keyboard navigation is and how much the "river" of messages improves usability.

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#305

Post by dionian » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

> Anyone who takes the time to ponder and respond thoughtfully with context and explanation will find that they’re too late.

I think this is a reasonable point, however, is this really a problem with the medium itself?

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#306

Post by daneel_w » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

And if it matters after today, don't send it as an SMS, don't send it as an e-mail, don't talk about it over the phone, and if it matters that someone knows you went out to meet this or that person, don't bring your phone with you.

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#307

Post by _4570 » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

berryjerry wrote: post #248

GordonS wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something very wrong with your Outlook and/or Exchange install if it takes "several minutes" to start. I've used Outlook in several organisations over the years, and start time has always been in the order of 5-10s.

For me it takes less than 2 seconds to start up fully. Not sure what is wrong with you guy's computers. Maybe you need an SSD or more RAM.

Took about 10 seconds. Using a mobile workstation with an SSD and 32GB of RAM. Maybe I should go for 64GB? :D

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#308

Post by twobitshifter » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

kingludite wrote: post #292

I don't know what to call it but some kind of training course, a spec or some other conditioning seems needed to get the best out of email. If the participants know 10 basic things like how and where to insert their responses and do not add 100 graphical signatures to each mail it gets 1000 times more wonderful and enjoyable. Long form doesn't become all that desirable that way. (It seems forums played a major role t…

Interestingly, outlook supports changing colors to help with inline replies and putting your name at the start of your online reply. I am the only person I have ever seen use that feature. Outlook.com no longer has the option.

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#309

Post by pseudalopex » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #300

pseudalopex wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mailing lists exist.

Mailing lists are not heavily used outside of free software. In the corporate world I’ve never had a project provide a mailing list to be used for discussions.

Tools exist even if you don't use them.

Many companies use Outlook groups. Those are mailing lists.

Re: If it will matter after today, don't talk about it in a chat room

#310

Post by wpietri » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

m_eiman wrote: post #283

wpietri wrote: post #192

I find this somewhat incomprehensible. Why the bias for seeing and archiving everything? The implicit model, which is right there in his title, is "talk", which is not naturally archived. I've built products just fine using verbal communication nearly exclusively. [1] We don't need to create some sort of panoptic archive of every conversation ever had to get things done. If people miss things, they miss things. We ca…

In my reading the point of the post is that it's important to have a record of the important things (like why did we decide to do X, or to do it in this specific way), and that putting such discussion in the same context as things that aren't important to record makes it very hard to filter out the important bits later on if needed. So they advocate for putting the important information in a separate context, that al…

That's a plausible interpretation, but the notion that "important=anything that matters for longer than 1 day" still makes no sense to me. And I also disagree that it's a priori important to have a record of important things. It's nearly tautological, and even if it weren't, there are some strong embedded assumptions about how to build software that at best need close examination.