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Why are people using a chat app like a wiki to begin with

542458 10y ago
Because codifying, organizing, and keeping up-to-date general knowledge on a wiki is hard work, whereas banging out a quick answer to a specific question on slack is comparatively easy. Which maybe should be a challenge to anybody looking to build the next generation of knowledge repositories.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
Why aren't they? One of the great strengths of the internet is that information doesn't usually go away; most of the time, you can refer back to something said 10 years ago with little extra effort. Slack breaks that.
- accountface 10y ago
  Isn't that the norm for chat apps though? It's not like they're breaking anything... people are just expecting something that doesn't really exist?
  - Sacho 10y ago
    Dunno, I have 10 year old irc chat logs sitting on my computer.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    Every chat app I've ever used going back to ICQ keeps permanent logs, except for Slack. (Technically Slack does too, it just keeps them on its own server and won't let you look unless you pay.)
    - derefr 10y ago
      Actually no: you can look all you like without paying, it's just kind of clumsy. If you "export your data from Slack" (yourteam.slack.com/services/export), you get the whole history, even on the free plan. I've repeatedly considered writing a bot that would—on a regular schedule—poke this page with a headless browser to generate a dump, download said dump, and ingest it into ElasticSearch (which I'd then expose through a web search, or maybe just spit out batched archive pages into a static-site S3 bucket and let Google index them.) Such a bot would be a good companion to https://github.com/rauchg/slackin https://github.com/rauchg/slackin for FOSS teams. But I haven't done any of that yet, because I get the feeling that putting enough attention on this little "feature" would get it quickly locked down.
- derefr 10y ago
  Honestly, I'd expect these "public" Slack groups of FOSS projects to have search-engine-accessible archives, just like Usenet and mailing lists do through Google Groups. Why do I need to know what Slack even is, to be able to find+read the answer someone gave someone else to a question over Slack?
tikhonj 10y ago
Because a bad Wiki people use is better than a good Wiki people don't.

Because codifying, organizing, and keeping up-to-date general knowledge on a wiki is hard work, whereas banging out a quick answer to a specific question on slack is comparatively easy. Which maybe should be a challenge to anybody looking to build the next generation of knowledge repositories.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

Why aren't they? One of the great strengths of the internet is that information doesn't usually go away; most of the time, you can refer back to something said 10 years ago with little extra effort. Slack breaks that.

accountface 10y ago
Isn't that the norm for chat apps though? It's not like they're breaking anything... people are just expecting something that doesn't really exist?
- Sacho 10y ago
  Dunno, I have 10 year old irc chat logs sitting on my computer.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Every chat app I've ever used going back to ICQ keeps permanent logs, except for Slack. (Technically Slack does too, it just keeps them on its own server and won't let you look unless you pay.)
  - derefr 10y ago
    Actually no: you can look all you like without paying, it's just kind of clumsy. If you "export your data from Slack" (yourteam.slack.com/services/export), you get the whole history, even on the free plan. I've repeatedly considered writing a bot that would—on a regular schedule—poke this page with a headless browser to generate a dump, download said dump, and ingest it into ElasticSearch (which I'd then expose through a web search, or maybe just spit out batched archive pages into a static-site S3 bucket and let Google index them.) Such a bot would be a good companion to https://github.com/rauchg/slackin https://github.com/rauchg/slackin for FOSS teams. But I haven't done any of that yet, because I get the feeling that putting enough attention on this little "feature" would get it quickly locked down.
derefr 10y ago
Honestly, I'd expect these "public" Slack groups of FOSS projects to have search-engine-accessible archives, just like Usenet and mailing lists do through Google Groups. Why do I need to know what Slack even is, to be able to find+read the answer someone gave someone else to a question over Slack?

tikhonj 10y ago

Because a bad Wiki people use is better than a good Wiki people don't.