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Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

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Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#131

Post by keville »

nougatine wrote: post #127
tzs wrote: post #123

There is a reason Jedi masters, powerful witches and wizards, ancient wise men and women, and so on tend to be found on isolated mountains, in remote caves, wandering in far away forests, and the like instead of living in the middle of the village with their doors open.

How are fictional characters and entities even remotely relevant to the article?

Email generally offers one more control over one's own workflow, and perhaps the opportunity to be a bit more focused, in an otherwise constantly-connected environment.

Code wizards need time on the lonely mountain to learn new spells.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#132

Post by it33 »

bambax wrote: post #18

Just went through Startup School that uses Mattermost, which seems to be a Slack clone (not sure since I never used Slack). It didn't seem to work well. Since all members of all groups were from all over the world and rarely shared a timezone, no conversation could really take place in real time. And since there are no threads or topics or anything, it's almost impossible to go back to something that was said a while…

Hi @bambax, Mattermost team here,

Appreciate your feedback. The Mattermost instance at Startup School does offer threads, if you either click the "Reply" arrow when you hover over a message or go to the "[...]" menu and select "Reply".

If it wasn't easy to discover, that's 100% our fault and we'll see what we can to do make it more prominent in the tutorial and in other ways.

Definitely agree threads are crucial to go back to topics in early discussions. We've had them since 2015 and for people using them, they become kind of indispensable.

Maybe give it a try? Would love to hear your thoughts in the Mattermost feedback channel.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#134

Post by misterbowfinger »

> In theory, everyone on the team had access to all the communication that happened in public channels. But in reality, even I couldn’t keep track of all the conversations that were happening at the company. Whoever happened to be connected at the time could follow along and be involved in the decision-making. Everyone else might not even be aware that the conversation happened at all.

This sounds really creepy

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#135

Post by r00fus »

TheRealmccoy wrote: post #100
mediocrejoker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of react vs respond. I wonder if you could explain a bit of what it means?

Event: Your boss shares an article on @channel at Slack. Reaction:: Since our boss has posted it and you don't want to be seemed a second rung player and the one who is NOT on her/his toes, you jump on the keyboard and first "Like/Thumbs Up" that post and then comment for the heck of it, something like "Wow", Amazing", "Insightful". Then you look over your back ie, to see how many others have commented before you, an…

So the boss throws out the article on a slack channel without any context? Sounds to me like if you want +1's that's what you do.

If you want reasoned discussion, there should be an ask from the boss on the channel-toss even if it is a @TheRealmccoy call-out on the posting.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#136

Post by lightedman »

TheRealmccoy wrote: post #55

The biggest drawback of a real time communication tool like Slack is the React v/s Respond conundrum. Productive communication and teamwork requires that we respond, rather than react. What happens specifically with tools like Slack which start off as demi-official tool and then transcend to official is that, one gets into the habit of reacting, instead of responding. I have personally seen this "fastest finger first…

"Productive communication and teamwork requires that we respond, rather than react."

I argue if you're too lazy to do both at nearly concurrent times then you might not be suited for that line of work.

I have no problems handling upwards of 10 concurrent 'lines' (aka customer input or manufacturer input issues) on my own. Systems for this exist. Learn about them and use them, or fall by the wayside. These complaints are the complaints of those from the 90s.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#137

Post by lightedman »

TheRealmccoy wrote: post #55

The biggest drawback of a real time communication tool like Slack is the React v/s Respond conundrum. Productive communication and teamwork requires that we respond, rather than react. What happens specifically with tools like Slack which start off as demi-official tool and then transcend to official is that, one gets into the habit of reacting, instead of responding. I have personally seen this "fastest finger first…

"Productive communication and teamwork requires that we respond, rather than react."

I argue if you're too lazy to do both at nearly concurrent times then you might not be suited for that line of work.

I have no problems handling upwards of 10 concurrent 'lines' (aka customer input or manufacturer input issues) on my own. Systems for this exist. Learn about them and use them, or fall by the wayside. These complaints are the complaints of those from the 90s.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#138

Post by efsavage »

TheRealmccoy wrote: post #100
mediocrejoker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of react vs respond. I wonder if you could explain a bit of what it means?

Event: Your boss shares an article on @channel at Slack. Reaction:: Since our boss has posted it and you don't want to be seemed a second rung player and the one who is NOT on her/his toes, you jump on the keyboard and first "Like/Thumbs Up" that post and then comment for the heck of it, something like "Wow", Amazing", "Insightful". Then you look over your back ie, to see how many others have commented before you, an…

If my boss posts something I will assume they found value in it and thinks it is worth the time of X people to read it for information. If they have a question about it, they will ask. If reading it right now matters, they will say so.

If they are just trawling for likes and noticing who posts something first, I will find a new boss.

Re: Why we’re betting against real-time team messaging

#140

Post by Stratoscope »

gengkev wrote: post #95
Karunamon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are shift+enter newlines "totally against the grain of the system design"? Most every chat system I'm aware of supports this and displays it in a sane way. If people are misusing the system, training/instruction is in order.

It may seem like a little thing, but you have to be very careful while typing not to accidentally press Enter. I've found this to be surprisingly difficult, and it makes typing a lot more stressful.

The trick I use if I'm writing anything more than one paragraph is to write it first in my #mike personal channel (easy to get to with Ctrl+K or Cmd+K), and then copy and paste it to the channel it's intended for.

This way I don't have to worry about hitting Enter at the wrong time. I can also preview the message so I see exactly how it will be formatted, and no one has to see the "mike is typing" messages while I edit.

I also went to the extreme of creating a private Slack team just for myself. I was using the personal channel trick and found that if I included an image in my talking-to-myself message, and then pasted it to another channel, it didn't automatically display the image in that channel. I guess Slack figured the image had already been displayed somewhere within the team even though it wasn't in a public or private channel. I have a feeling this has been fixed by now.

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