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Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

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Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#181

Post by philip1209 »

charcircuit wrote: post #114
philip1209 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been posting updates here, where you can see a demo: https://bookletupdates.substack.com I'm working on "public" groups, so that I can link directly to a meta group about the project from the homepage. It should be live early next week! -- I'm using phone number as primary login for these reasons: 1. I want passwordless login 2. Passwordless login with email is confusing because most people have multiple emails.…

I personally find giving out my phone number as being several orders of magnitude more invasive to my privacy than filling out a simple captcha.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#182

Post by notreallyserio »

rossmmurray wrote: post #162
notreallyserio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, it is incredible that Slack is used WITHOUT threads. The first time information you need is sent in a thread that started a week ago and that you're not already on, you'll get why folks don't like Slack threads. They're an anti-feature, IMO. If Slack offered a way to show all messages whether or not they're in a thread, as they come in, I'd be down. I wouldn't like 'em but at least I could work around their…

Isn't this what the slack search bar is for? I was sceptical of using it at first but I often find what I'm looking for by typing in one or two key words and restricting the search to certain channels that likely have the information.

Search can help address this issue if you know that people were discussing something you're interested in. However, it's possible (and in my experience likely) for an important topic to come up in a thread and not make its way back to the channel. In that case you may not know that it's something you need to search for.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#183

Post by dota_fanatic »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #146

This doesn't really sound like a problem with Slack, but rather a personal or cultural problem with a lack of setting or respecting boundaries. Slack has options to communicate: - that you're away - that you're on a call or in a meeting etc. - to pause notifications for an hour or whatever - to star the most relevant channels - to mute less-relevant channels - to leave irrelevant channels - to sideline conversations…

However, Slack doesn't allow you to a) stay alertable to a subset of the company (e.g. people you are working heads down with on a project) while b) ignoring everyone else in the company. Even if you stick those people in a common channel and mute the rest of the channels you are in, people can still jeopardize your focus with a single at-mention or DM. Just anyone can hijack your sidebar.

Slack doesn't respect something as simple and fundamental as the focus of a small team within a larger org. But if they did that, they wouldn't sell as many subscriptions, because it would be less addictive, I guess?

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#184

Post by ziml77 »

whatshisface wrote: post #138
KennyBlanken wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A situation where the corporation is engaged in embarrassing or illegal shit and they're using Slack so they can do all the above-board, non-embarassing stuff via email that would show up in discovery. 5 day retention is so wildly impractical, it's a tacit admission the corp is up to something. Gives legal time to drag anything out in court until it's all gone. By the time the other party learns they have the 5-day r…

> By the time the other party learns they have the 5-day retention, it's too late. Anyone hoping to use this trick to pull off the perfect caper will be dismayed to discover that not only is the other party allowed to talk to your employees, human testimony is admissible. The idea of trying to make the past go away after five days, by deleting the digital records, reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1494/ . I'd also like…

If it wasn't for HN, I don't think that XKCD would have been anything more to me than a joke about programmers enjoying coming up with "cool hacks". But in the comments here I far too often find people trying to come up with legal loopholes that assume the system is perfectly rigid.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#185

Post by ziml77 »

geewee wrote: post #164
Jiejeing wrote: post #160

Microsoft has a solution to that problem: Teams. It is so painful to use and to do anything in it that it encourages people to actually use the bug tracker or other venues to discuss any serious topic.

I honestly don't think it's that bad. I've used both Slack and teams simultaneously for a few years, and I honestly don't see a lot of differences.

Teams is garbage. I'll end up with conversations or images that don't load until I click back and try again. If I search a chat for something, clicking the result will often not scroll the correct message into view. It doesn't allow you to be on a call on multiple devices at once so I can use the desktop I'm remoted into for viewing a screen share while using the app on my phone for audio. It tries to retain the formatting of what you're pasting in, often resulting in a mess and sometimes getting stuck with certain font formatting.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#186

Post by jpalomaki »

Maybe instead of Slack we should use more collaborative editing tools (like Google Docs or Miro).

I haven’t really tried that, but it might be interesting if for example during troubleshooting session everybody was putting the facts to same document.

At least the end result could be easier to consume than a very long chat log.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#187

Post by hackandtrip »

ydant wrote: post #66
notreallyserio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, it is incredible that Slack is used WITHOUT threads. The first time information you need is sent in a thread that started a week ago and that you're not already on, you'll get why folks don't like Slack threads. They're an anti-feature, IMO. If Slack offered a way to show all messages whether or not they're in a thread, as they come in, I'd be down. I wouldn't like 'em but at least I could work around their…

And it's such a simple option to add, too - as far as I can tell, each message in a thread is just a message in the channel, just with a "threadId" attached to it. The client's the one that hides it and makes a mess of the experience. But what it really needs is elevating threads to something like a temporary "sub-channel". Show them on the side-bar just like channels so you don't lose messsages CONSTANTLY if you're…

I understand and agree on this, BUT I feel like we are not at the point where Slack could decide autonomously which threads deserve their own channel.

Usually, in our workspace, it's the person leading the discussion that at some points decide to redirect the talk somewhere else

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#188

Post by hackandtrip »

sstangl wrote: post #54
notreallyserio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, it is incredible that Slack is used WITHOUT threads. The first time information you need is sent in a thread that started a week ago and that you're not already on, you'll get why folks don't like Slack threads. They're an anti-feature, IMO. If Slack offered a way to show all messages whether or not they're in a thread, as they come in, I'd be down. I wouldn't like 'em but at least I could work around their…

> If Slack offered a way to show all messages whether or not they're in a thread, as they come in, I'd be down. This is how Zulip works. It's extremely effective.

Well, that's because threads are just first citizen in Zulip, even more than in Slack!

Basically, a thread is visible at a first glance from the UI, while that's not true in Slack. Also, you can kinda replicate Zulip structure by just using channels with naming conventions, so you have: - generic channels, e.g. for status update for many stakeholders - specific channels for each feature - threads in each channel where you discuss a single point

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#189

Post by nxpnsv »

solatic wrote: post #143
nxpnsv wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All comms through manager sounds like a dystopian nightmare worse than slack if you ask me...

I don't mean all communication, I just mean in the case that you aren't aware of what to do because you're new.

That’s way saner :)

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#190

Post by ydant »

hackandtrip wrote: post #187
ydant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's such a simple option to add, too - as far as I can tell, each message in a thread is just a message in the channel, just with a "threadId" attached to it. The client's the one that hides it and makes a mess of the experience. But what it really needs is elevating threads to something like a temporary "sub-channel". Show them on the side-bar just like channels so you don't lose messsages CONSTANTLY if you're…

I understand and agree on this, BUT I feel like we are not at the point where Slack could decide autonomously which threads deserve their own channel. Usually, in our workspace, it's the person leading the discussion that at some points decide to redirect the talk somewhere else

I just dream of the day when Slack has "all threads with unread messages" show up in the side bar - somewhere. Let it be an option you can turn on/off, if need be. But right now I feel like I have to obsessively scroll down the threads list and look for things that are new.

Maybe it's a company size thing, as mentioned elsewhere in this discussion. At my size company (<10 people), every thread I'm watching - I pretty much need to see all of the new messages.

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