5 ms·

Slack doesn't advertise as a chat for thousands of users, but teams of 5 to 50, worse case 100 people. It's "lucky" they didn't hard code a limit.

by erelde 10y ago

mcintyre1994 10y ago
They did hard code a limit, the API has a specific error for that. They just choose not to disclose it, and to advertise with the phrase "Slack is free to use for as long as you want for teams of all sizes."
- erelde 10y ago
  Well then I guess they expect the word "team" should be self explanatory... Maybe it's not.
  - dahart 10y ago
    This is a completely legitimate point. They are expecting "team" to be self explanatory, and it is a vague term that is not self-explanatory. If there's a size limit, it would be best if they stated that plainly. But, come on, you have to admit that an online community of thousands of people does not fit even the most charitable interpretation of the word "team".
    - sgift 10y ago
      > But, come on, you have to admit that an online community of thousands of people does not fit even the most charitable interpretation of the word "team". That is basically what the whole thread and article evolves about. Are 10k people a team? Really? Sure, you can argue all day that technically it may be the case, the whole world could be my team, some kind of super team and so a service shouldn't make any assumptions and so on, but reality is that everyone who hears "team" has a pretty good idea of a ball park figure how many people that will be and that freecodecamp doesn't fit into this. So, in the end it's just playing around semantics "but, but, but ... you said of any size .."
      - dahart 10y ago
        The whole world is not a team. You can only say that if you're making an intentionally, consciously hyperbolic statement. I am not interested in long and un-ending pedantic arguments about the extreme corner-case definitions of words. I maintain that an online community of 10k people does not fit even the most charitable meaning of a working "team". If that doesn't work for you, then you're only setting yourself up for surprise. This argument that "any size" should really mean "any size" amounts to someone walking into an "all-you-can-eat" buffet and expecting to be able to sit at the same table for 2 weeks eating all meals for the price of one, and then complaining that the 'all you can eat' advertisement should overrule all other policies the restaurant has. It would be the same as someone seeing an ad for mini-golfing for $20 for a family of any size, and then bringing four thousand of your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins, and demanding that the entire group gets in for $20. While there's a pedantic, technical truth to cousins belonging to your 'family', it doesn't meet anybody's common understanding of what an ad for family prices means, even the person trying to cheat the system. If the author truly didn't even suspect that his 10k users is a massive stretch of the idea of a "team", the message limits should have been a clue, but instead of acknowledging he was pushing the limits, he blamed Slack.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  "For teams of all sizes" is pretty deceptive. Even if the limit was disclosed somewhere deeper, advertising with a fundamentally inaccurate line is unfortunate.
  - arcticfox 10y ago
    While their language was poorly chosen, I think what Slack meant was that their free tier was under no additional restrictions than their paid tier for team size, which seems reasonable. And signing people up with an undocumented API that skips a big amount of signup friction seems like a recipe for running into undocumented limits. Would we be upset with Slack for not supporting 1 million user teams? 1 billion? 1 trillion?
    - lawpoop 10y ago
      640k should be enough for anybody
  - zellyn 10y ago
    At a "team" size of 5000, the 10000-message limit means you each get 2 messages before things start disappearing. So I think the message limit pretty strongly implies a team member limit.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      But is the user limit only for the free version? As I read that support email it was simply a limit on the size of Slack teams across the board.

Slack doesn't advertise as a chat for thousands of users, but teams of 5 to 50, worse case 100 people. It's "lucky" they didn't hard code a limit.

by erelde 10y ago

Slack doesn't advertise as a chat for thousands of users, but teams of 5 to 50, worse case 100 people. It's "lucky" they didn't hard code a limit.

mcintyre1994 10y ago

They did hard code a limit, the API has a specific error for that. They just choose not to disclose it, and to advertise with the phrase "Slack is free to use for as long as you want for teams of all sizes."

erelde 10y ago
Well then I guess they expect the word "team" should be self explanatory... Maybe it's not.
- dahart 10y ago
  This is a completely legitimate point. They are expecting "team" to be self explanatory, and it is a vague term that is not self-explanatory. If there's a size limit, it would be best if they stated that plainly. But, come on, you have to admit that an online community of thousands of people does not fit even the most charitable interpretation of the word "team".
  - sgift 10y ago
    > But, come on, you have to admit that an online community of thousands of people does not fit even the most charitable interpretation of the word "team". That is basically what the whole thread and article evolves about. Are 10k people a team? Really? Sure, you can argue all day that technically it may be the case, the whole world could be my team, some kind of super team and so a service shouldn't make any assumptions and so on, but reality is that everyone who hears "team" has a pretty good idea of a ball park figure how many people that will be and that freecodecamp doesn't fit into this. So, in the end it's just playing around semantics "but, but, but ... you said of any size .."
    - dahart 10y ago
      The whole world is not a team. You can only say that if you're making an intentionally, consciously hyperbolic statement. I am not interested in long and un-ending pedantic arguments about the extreme corner-case definitions of words. I maintain that an online community of 10k people does not fit even the most charitable meaning of a working "team". If that doesn't work for you, then you're only setting yourself up for surprise. This argument that "any size" should really mean "any size" amounts to someone walking into an "all-you-can-eat" buffet and expecting to be able to sit at the same table for 2 weeks eating all meals for the price of one, and then complaining that the 'all you can eat' advertisement should overrule all other policies the restaurant has. It would be the same as someone seeing an ad for mini-golfing for $20 for a family of any size, and then bringing four thousand of your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins, and demanding that the entire group gets in for $20. While there's a pedantic, technical truth to cousins belonging to your 'family', it doesn't meet anybody's common understanding of what an ad for family prices means, even the person trying to cheat the system. If the author truly didn't even suspect that his 10k users is a massive stretch of the idea of a "team", the message limits should have been a clue, but instead of acknowledging he was pushing the limits, he blamed Slack.
Bartweiss 10y ago
"For teams of all sizes" is pretty deceptive. Even if the limit was disclosed somewhere deeper, advertising with a fundamentally inaccurate line is unfortunate.
- arcticfox 10y ago
  While their language was poorly chosen, I think what Slack meant was that their free tier was under no additional restrictions than their paid tier for team size, which seems reasonable. And signing people up with an undocumented API that skips a big amount of signup friction seems like a recipe for running into undocumented limits. Would we be upset with Slack for not supporting 1 million user teams? 1 billion? 1 trillion?
  - lawpoop 10y ago
    640k should be enough for anybody
- zellyn 10y ago
  At a "team" size of 5000, the 10000-message limit means you each get 2 messages before things start disappearing. So I think the message limit pretty strongly implies a team member limit.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    But is the user limit only for the free version? As I read that support email it was simply a limit on the size of Slack teams across the board.