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Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

blog.zulip.com

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Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#51

Post by JadoJodo »

layoric wrote: post #26
JadoJodo wrote: post #21

It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community. I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/c…

There is absolutely a self hosting option with Discourse, and in fact they encourage it. [0] Here is their install guide [1] [0] https://github.com/discourse/discourse [1] https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTAL...

Thank you for posting that. In taking a second look, I do see a link about installing it yourself. Though given the section mentioning it on the pricing page is below the fold, I'm not sure that I would go so far as to say they _encourage_ it. But it's good they have the option (and I did see info about vendors who also host)

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#52

Post by williamstein »

olingern wrote: post #23

If Zulip became an overnight success, five to seven years from now I see them making similar changes. Resources cost money and Slack achieved what it needed to in order to establish itself as the dominant company in the space. If anything, this will allow for some meaningful competition

One difference is that Zulip is 100% open source, whereas Slack is not.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#53

Post by jimvdv »

aeturnum wrote: post #46

This felt like a mean spirited and cynical money play to me, especially coming years after launching free instances. For smaller groups (families, houses, etc) this effectively forces them to pay or lose months or years of history. To me, this says that I can't trust that slack cares about supporting what people are currently using their product for. They'll be looking for opportunities to reduce costs or increase re…

> pay or lose months or years of history.

You can download all your workspace data now, includes chat history.

Chat history on free plan was already limited, so I don’t think anyone who was aware of that was using it as an archive.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#54

Post by bee_rider »

major505 wrote: post #30

I mean, where are we gonna go? Microsoft Teams? Damn thing is terrible. I guess Discord can be a option.

A new one will pop up.

It is the chat client circle of life. An old chat client has to do something unpopular to obtain some return on investment. Users look for a new solution. They find one that is still in the "basically mature but trying to grow marketshare by using investor money to provide services and features for free." It works well while that investor money holds out/as long as they can get more ("look at our user growth!"). Eventually investors get tired of paying for things, look for an ROI, and they have to do something unpopular...

Hopefully the "gamer" branding will keep Discord in their niche for a little longer. It will be a shame when we all have to transfer our gaming groups to something different.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#55

Post by lolinder »

userbinator wrote: post #29

IRC has always been free and you can search as much as you've logged... One thing that a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding is just how little space text takes up; someone typing at 120wpm continuously for 28h has only generated a little over 1MB of text. No doubt Slack is taking advantage of that lack of understanding to make people think the costs are greater.

Slack allows image and file uploads, and in every slack I've been on that feature is used heavily. Those stack up fast.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#56

Post by Melatonic »

JadoJodo wrote: post #21

It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community. I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/c…

Yeah - one thing I dislike about Reddit - it has eaten up all of the small forums and killed them. On one hand Reddit can be great but on the other hand sometimes you just want to discuss some niche stuff or hobby - and too much other crap will spillover from other subreddits sometimes to make that as useful

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#57

Post by chx »

joe-collins wrote: post #35
JadoJodo wrote: post #21

It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community. I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/c…

Community is good, but you can get that within a chat server, and there's something else massive that we've lost: searchability. Slack and Discord each have competent internal searches, after you've joined a particular server , but they're utter black boxes to the outer world. I can point to several niches (mostly gaming, by inclination) where there is virtually no conversation outside of a Discord. Unless you find t…

The wiki situation is really not helped by how wikia turned into fandom turned into a garbage fire. I am not even sure whether there are any active, thriving wikis on fandom any more. Maybe Wookieepedia but there are noises of moving that away, too. What they have done to that site can not be borne.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#58

Post by Buttons840 »

JadoJodo wrote: post #21

It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community. I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/c…

> I'm terrified of making a post on the wrong server by accident

I suspect this is one reason why forums died. Forums are places of muliti-paragraph well-structured posts. How many are uncomfortable with that? How many are even uncomfortable making a one sentence Slack or Discord post?

Forums could serve an important role in business documentation. Got a legacy project that nobody has touched for a decade? Imagine if years ago the developers had discussed things in forums instead of meetings.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#59

Post by insightcheck »

joe-collins wrote: post #35
JadoJodo wrote: post #21

It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community. I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/c…

Community is good, but you can get that within a chat server, and there's something else massive that we've lost: searchability. Slack and Discord each have competent internal searches, after you've joined a particular server , but they're utter black boxes to the outer world. I can point to several niches (mostly gaming, by inclination) where there is virtually no conversation outside of a Discord. Unless you find t…

The more fragile presence of the information is actually a feature to some. If messages are more permanent and accessible, people can be more likely to stop and think before replying for more substantive discussion, instead of having a free-flowing conversation.

I generally also prefer forums that are searchable and public, but it's nice to have a real-time communication with someone over Discord (e.g. a couple sentences per message that gets responses, with some jokes sprinkled in). I think it's a lot easier to develop a one-to-one interaction or relationship with someone over Discord, versus forums structured like HN or Reddit.

Re: Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus

#60

Post by insightcheck »

chx wrote: post #57
joe-collins wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community is good, but you can get that within a chat server, and there's something else massive that we've lost: searchability. Slack and Discord each have competent internal searches, after you've joined a particular server , but they're utter black boxes to the outer world. I can point to several niches (mostly gaming, by inclination) where there is virtually no conversation outside of a Discord. Unless you find t…

The wiki situation is really not helped by how wikia turned into fandom turned into a garbage fire. I am not even sure whether there are any active, thriving wikis on fandom any more. Maybe Wookieepedia but there are noises of moving that away, too. What they have done to that site can not be borne.

The fandoms for indie games (e.g. Papers, Please [0] and several others for less popular games) remain active, though not particularly curated. It's still nice to find some for particularly niche games, as some information (even if too opinionated or incomplete) is better than nothing for smaller games.

[0] https://papersplease.fandom.com/wiki/Papers_Please_Wiki

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