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We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

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Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#121

Post by dpark »

vorpalhex wrote: post #117
dpark wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack isn't intended for "friends". Their business model is clearly aimed at supporting teams inside businesses. $60 per head is absurd for a tool to chat with friends but pretty reasonable for a business that gets real value from the tool.

They clearly indicate otherwise. Slack is certainly meant as a productivity tool, but they make several claims: + For all kinds of "Work" + For teams of all types and sizes + Bringing people together to make them productive Compare that to the messaging for say Hipchat: + "Team chat built for business" + Enterprise features + Loved by your IT team (Edit - Formatting)

I think you're selectively reading what you want to see. Slack's title line is "Where Work Happens". Work, teams, and productivity normally are not terms you use to describe chatting with friends.

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#122

Post by lmm »

Svip wrote: post #118
lmm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With IRC and Bitleebee, I can combine a lot of protocols in one client, keep it running in a screen, and access it via SSH. At which point you're not really using IRC. You're using the Bittleebee-commands-over-SSH protocol. This protocol has a number of issues: it requires having a server with a unix user account running on it (which is a massive attack surface, no-one can offer a server like that for free or it wi…

I apologise, I wasn't clear. I primarily use IRC, but I also use Bitleebee, but it isn't my primarily protocol(s). I just meant that I could combine all these protocols in one client. As for Slack's IRC gateway, I think it's pretty decent, yes. I personally prefer it to Slack's own client (again, that's just me). But this is what bothers me about Discord, because that doesn't offer an IRC gateway, and I am forced to…

Most of the communities I'm part of are onto Discord now, and that's a lot nicer experience in terms of having them all in once place than Biteebee ever was.

I'm all for federation and open protocols, I wish Discord had gateways and I'm hopeful for Matrix. But I don't think IRC is the answer: it's inherently without identity, inherently text-only, inherently historyless. These problems can't be solved well without protocol changes, but for whatever reason IRC has developed a community that is hostile to any protocol improvements and preferes to encourage ad-hoc hacks for these aspects, none of which works well and most of which don't work at all.

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#123

Post by Svip »

lmm wrote: post #122
Svip wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologise, I wasn't clear. I primarily use IRC, but I also use Bitleebee, but it isn't my primarily protocol(s). I just meant that I could combine all these protocols in one client. As for Slack's IRC gateway, I think it's pretty decent, yes. I personally prefer it to Slack's own client (again, that's just me). But this is what bothers me about Discord, because that doesn't offer an IRC gateway, and I am forced to…

Most of the communities I'm part of are onto Discord now, and that's a lot nicer experience in terms of having them all in once place than Biteebee ever was. I'm all for federation and open protocols, I wish Discord had gateways and I'm hopeful for Matrix. But I don't think IRC is the answer: it's inherently without identity, inherently text-only, inherently historyless. These problems can't be solved well without pr…

I definitely agree that IRC would do well to have improvements, like an IRC/2.0 protocol. But no one is willing to get involved, likely because A) they don't want to develop a standard no one will use, B) get bogged in draft committees for years and C) they just aren't motivated.

I only proposed intermediate solutions, because I thought that would be more likely to actually amount to something. Kind of like when Google did SPDY to push for HTTP/2.0, but you'd need a player the size and with the interest of Google to do IRC/2.0. Someone to make the decisions.

It's almost ridiculous that something as ubiquitous as instant communication doesn't get more serious attention.

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#124

Post by detaro »

Svip wrote: post #123
lmm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the communities I'm part of are onto Discord now, and that's a lot nicer experience in terms of having them all in once place than Biteebee ever was. I'm all for federation and open protocols, I wish Discord had gateways and I'm hopeful for Matrix. But I don't think IRC is the answer: it's inherently without identity, inherently text-only, inherently historyless. These problems can't be solved well without pr…

I definitely agree that IRC would do well to have improvements, like an IRC/2.0 protocol. But no one is willing to get involved, likely because A) they don't want to develop a standard no one will use, B) get bogged in draft committees for years and C) they just aren't motivated. I only proposed intermediate solutions, because I thought that would be more likely to actually amount to something. Kind of like when Goog…

There is quite a bit of work happening on IRCv3? (at least it looks like that from the outside, I haven't looked into it so can't judge the quality)

http://ircv3.net/

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#125

Post by lmm »

detaro wrote: post #124
Svip wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree that IRC would do well to have improvements, like an IRC/2.0 protocol. But no one is willing to get involved, likely because A) they don't want to develop a standard no one will use, B) get bogged in draft committees for years and C) they just aren't motivated. I only proposed intermediate solutions, because I thought that would be more likely to actually amount to something. Kind of like when Goog…

There is quite a bit of work happening on IRCv3? (at least it looks like that from the outside, I haven't looked into it so can't judge the quality) http://ircv3.net/

Many IRC fans hate "IRCv3" and feel they're unjustly piggybacking the IRC name to push their own protocol. (Compare Gnutella2).

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#126

Post by lmm »

Svip wrote: post #123
lmm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the communities I'm part of are onto Discord now, and that's a lot nicer experience in terms of having them all in once place than Biteebee ever was. I'm all for federation and open protocols, I wish Discord had gateways and I'm hopeful for Matrix. But I don't think IRC is the answer: it's inherently without identity, inherently text-only, inherently historyless. These problems can't be solved well without pr…

I definitely agree that IRC would do well to have improvements, like an IRC/2.0 protocol. But no one is willing to get involved, likely because A) they don't want to develop a standard no one will use, B) get bogged in draft committees for years and C) they just aren't motivated. I only proposed intermediate solutions, because I thought that would be more likely to actually amount to something. Kind of like when Goog…

I don't think building it as a tower of IRC extensions will ever work. You get stuck on "good enough", and the IRC userbase is aggressively anti-centralisation (far more so than the HTTP userbase), anti-change even, and text-oriented.

I've long since given up on any effort to make IRC good. I think energy is more productively spent on ground-up protocols that can include the good parts of IRC but also solve the problems I mentioned. Matrix is where most of my hope is going at the moment.

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#127

Post by DontGiveTwoFlux »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #91
AckSyn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* file uploads in your chat client are misplaced at best, and "rich" environments with formatting and images are 99.999% distractions * channel services can provide archiving and notifications. * scrollback can be handled by a bouncer, yes, but it's up to the IT dept to set it up per-user * there are plenty of usable irc clients for mobile, web, and desktop to satisfy this need. source: Started using telegram/slack b…

> file uploads in your chat client are misplaced at best, and "rich" environments with formatting and images are 99.999% distractions We can agree to disagree, but I think that the wide adoption of things like Slack and Hipchat are strong indicators that most people side with me. What sort of productivity problems did y'all have? Because I have a hard and fast rule - if someone tries to introduce a giphy bot into a c…

Life of the party here!

What's the problem with giphy? Is it too silly? Too much light hearted humor going on in your team's chat?

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#128

Post by pavel_lishin »

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #127
pavel_lishin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> file uploads in your chat client are misplaced at best, and "rich" environments with formatting and images are 99.999% distractions We can agree to disagree, but I think that the wide adoption of things like Slack and Hipchat are strong indicators that most people side with me. What sort of productivity problems did y'all have? Because I have a hard and fast rule - if someone tries to introduce a giphy bot into a c…

Life of the party here! What's the problem with giphy? Is it too silly? Too much light hearted humor going on in your team's chat?

> Too much light hearted humor going on in your team's chat?

We have an off-topic room for light-hearted humor, and it generally gets more traffic than any of the work related channels!

> What's the problem with giphy? Is it too silly?

It's usually too irrelevant. Someone tries to do "/giphy smile", and the result is something that's not actually someone smiling. So they try again. And again. And then it's just people playing giggle roulette, without any actual content. Even off-topic, humor rooms need a decent signal to noise ratio.

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#129

Post by Nomentatus »

dahart wrote: post #104
zedadex wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The due diligence in this case would have been researching the user limits which (as others have pointed out) were not published or advertised anywhere.

There's a reason it's called "diligence", because it typically involves trying . Personally, I don't count reading a company's ad copy on their own web page as being even remotely diligent or doing much research. Normally 'due diligence' involves talking to the party you intend to engage with, as well as talking to others who have experience with that party. The author didn't mention any of that. Other users here als…

Trying a huge number of users? How without migrating?

He could have asked innumerable questions all of which contradicted the description of what he was getting. He couldn't have known which was the right question. I very rarely query in person before a purchase; I did recently and was given a flatly wrong answer on one question, and then a very positive answer that wasn't logically coherent (strongly suggesting a no, in truth) on a second question. I'm buying anyway, but unless you can phone a corporate head, querying customer support for arcane technical information is rarely a great way to get the right answer, in my experience (sorry to say.) UNLESS you already have a proven fail, of course - which he did.

If it were my program there'd be an error message in there no matter what the upper limit was; I assume others are as competent.

I also don't follow your logic re the high price tag somehow logically entailing a secret limit on the free product - unless you're implying that it's a trap, a way of phishing for phools. (In my country, an illegal bait and switch, actually.) That's something that doesn't work too well when you're peddling to corporations, the pool is small and word gets around too fast.

Re: We Tried Slack and We Deeply Regretted It (2015)

#130

Post by Nomentatus »

dahart wrote: post #108
cammio wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

troll

Hahahaha! I upvoted you because that's funny. But word to the wise; this kind of comment, even if you're joking, can get flagged and backfire badly on HN. If you're serious, I'd like to invite you to share your reasoning for your insult. I gave a direct answer to a direct question from @Nomentatus, and had no intention of saying something inflammatory.

You're correct, I did use sarcasm; I probably did come close near the edge. Certainly had I been appalled in a poor cause my comment would have been flaggable. So I'll bear your reservation in mind, although I do find wit too tempting to keep it to myself, usually.

My family is in part Prussian, and this is an example, now that I look at it, of fabled Prussian sarcasm, which I became familiar with (at the sharp end) from my grandmother, and didn't like, much.

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