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Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

posthog.com

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Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#81

Post by rvdginste »

whinvik wrote: post #2

Would be nice if forums come back simply because of the searchability. The problem is when they become inundated with users and have too much noise. Maybe it will be just another cycle which will lead back to Slack/Discord after some years and then back to forum after some more.

I agree, I think forums and things like Slack/Discord/IRC is used for different kinds of communication. Forums are rather asynchronous, while the others are rather synchronous.

When a forum is used to help someone fix a problem, there is a communication thread that (as you say) can be searched and followed by other people. In things like Slack/Discord/IRC, this kinda of thing "disappears". Even if you have seachable logs, I think these are a lot harder to search than a forum that is more "structured".

I do believe there is value in having both forums and Slack/Discord/IRC.

Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#83

Post by PUSH_AX »

makeitshine wrote: post #25
whinvik wrote: post #2

Would be nice if forums come back simply because of the searchability. The problem is when they become inundated with users and have too much noise. Maybe it will be just another cycle which will lead back to Slack/Discord after some years and then back to forum after some more.

Discord search is horrendous. The chat and threads are nice, but finding previous messages can be difficult. I feel like there's a opportunity here for someone to make a similar platform with far better search.

Discord search is pretty standard, you can do much worse. Especially at their scale.

Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#84

Post by rvdginste »

arthur_sav wrote: post #73

I've been part of an open source project for well over 2 years now. We use Slack for community management (3k users). It's pretty clear to me that Slack was never really meant to replace forums: - Lots of the previously answered questions are lost - Search is not great and is limited to Slack. We have many non-slack users searching through Google. - It's noisy with random chatter - It's harder for us to keep track of…

I think forum/mailinglist and Slack/Discord/IRC are different kinds of communication: the first is rather asynchronous/offline while the second is rather synchronous/online. I believe they can exist next to each other within a project or community.

For keeping track of specific questions and how those can be answered, a forum is a lot better. But random chatter can also be useful and that is a better fit for things like IRC.

Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#86

Post by Xcelerate »

rvdginste wrote: post #81
whinvik wrote: post #2

Would be nice if forums come back simply because of the searchability. The problem is when they become inundated with users and have too much noise. Maybe it will be just another cycle which will lead back to Slack/Discord after some years and then back to forum after some more.

I agree, I think forums and things like Slack/Discord/IRC is used for different kinds of communication. Forums are rather asynchronous, while the others are rather synchronous. When a forum is used to help someone fix a problem, there is a communication thread that (as you say) can be searched and followed by other people. In things like Slack/Discord/IRC, this kinda of thing "disappears". Even if you have seachable…

> In things like Slack/Discord/IRC, this kinda of thing "disappears"

This drives me nuts. I went from one company that used Workplace to a different one that uses Slack, and I can never find anything anymore. “Who was in that conversation back in November? What timeline for this project did we agree upon?” I spend half an hour adjusting search filters in Slack to try and find information like this.

Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#88

Post by EasyMark »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #18

I wonder if they considered reddit.

Given reddit's recent middle finger to it's long time user base I'd not base any part of my business around it. Sure, if some employees wanted to hang out on reddit and answer a few questions more power to them, but as the official company forum/info outlet? no way.

Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#89

Post by shafyy »

ironmagma wrote: post #5

I hope this is the beginning of a trend. Depending on some third party to manage my communications with a second party feels dirty and also forces me to clutter up my (in this case) Slack setup. Discord is even more insane in this regard.

100%. At least use GitHub Discussions.

Re: Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum

#90

Post by kandros »

whinvik wrote: post #2

Would be nice if forums come back simply because of the searchability. The problem is when they become inundated with users and have too much noise. Maybe it will be just another cycle which will lead back to Slack/Discord after some years and then back to forum after some more.

I recently had problems finding an old message, I learned that having “streamer mode” enabled prevents a lot of search features and filters

I had no idea why streamer mode was active so worth checking it this also apply to you

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