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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?

#51

Post by philip1209 »

edgyquant wrote: post #49
philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

I’m interested in your idea, bringing what we’ve mastered in chat to the forum, but I don’t want to give my phone number or spin up a forum just to see. Is there an example forum?

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. But, most people have only one phone number.

3. I want to support per-group email preferences easily (i.e., multi-email)

4. iOS auto-fill makes it trivial to sign in

5. Phone number verification hopefully provides enough spam control that I can avoid deploying tools like Recaptcha - which I think are more invasive to privacy. (I'm aiming to be 100% Google-free and Facebook-free)

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

#52

Post by Tempest1981 »

> It was rare to open Slack in the morning and not already be immediately underwater by 3 to 5 mentions representing conversations that needed to be waded into.

The "Remind me later" feature is a good way to avoid morning-overload syndrome. Just snooze the ones requiring a reply for 1 hour, 3 hours, tomorrow. Feels great.

Then turn off notifications, and go get stuff done.

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

#53

Post by yuliyp »

brimble wrote: post #18
e2021 wrote: post #3

One of the things I miss working at Facebook is the internal FB (called Workplace). It basically replaced email for the whole company, and worked really well for long form posts where maybe you would write some proposal up or make an announcement and get a bunch of comments. I now work at a slack centric company, and it just doesn't compare - there is no 'newsfeed', so unless you remember to check all the channels, y…

I've seen internal Facebook-alikes a couple places and they've been gross LinkedIn-tone places taken over by HR and managers doing rah-rah-let's-go-we're-so-great stuff and a few workers trying to kiss ass. What about Facebook's kept it from being that? Broader culture, or was there some enforcement of it? (plus, and this is just a me-problem, I find them impossibly confusing because they ape Facebook's UI, which I f…

The biggest thing about Facebook's Workplace instance is that it's actually used by everyone, so while there will be the HR and manager posts, there are also all of the incident discussions, feature discussions, investigations, etc in there as well. With teams having the power to create their own (potentially private) groups to manage their own communication too, it meant that a lot of the content was useful.

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

#54

Post by sstangl »

notreallyserio wrote: post #43
hackandtrip wrote: post #20

To me, it is incredible that Slack is used WITHOUT threads. There is no way that information and discussions can be effective without a threaded conversation - it would just be pure cause otherwise. Also, I find feature-specific channels to be such a pleasure. It's easy to have everyone focused on the same topic in a given channel, without any confusion or missing information between different channels or private mes…

> 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.

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

#57

Post by adenozine »

philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

Landing page isn't particularly appetizing with "SATAN'S COFFEE" in big block letters.

Is that sentimental to you?

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

#58

Post by philip1209 »

adenozine wrote: post #57
philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

Landing page isn't particularly appetizing with "SATAN'S COFFEE" in big block letters. Is that sentimental to you?

Yes, the homepage is a placeholder. Planning to update it in the next couple of weeks.

Satan's Coffee is a great little spot in Barcelona. The inspiration was that Booklet should feel like a fika [1] where once a day you sit down and participate in some thoughtful conversations.

I spent a couple of years as a digital nomad, and have fond memories of some cafes such as Satan's Coffee!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_culture#Sweden

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

#59

Post by bgoated »

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.

I second this. Zulip works extremely well at my workplace.

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

#60

Post by stavros »

philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

Zulip solves the problem you mention extremely well.
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