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To have all the features you get for free out of slack, you have to do a lot of work and maintenance to get out of IRC and mailing lists. Mailing lists by them

by NateDad 10y ago

To have all the features you get for free out of slack, you have to do a lot of work and maintenance to get out of IRC and mailing lists. Mailing lists by themselves are terrible, because there's no history. You can't scroll up to find context for the conversation. You can get public archives, but then where you actually use the mailing list and where you go to look at history are completely separate, which is a terrible UX. Google groups mostly fixes this because they're really just a forum that supports emails. IRC is terrible because everyone has their own client, so you never actually know what someone will see when you post something. Post a link, - will it get auto-expanded? How will it look? Will it get auto-linked? If you @ someone, will they get notified? if so, how visibly? IRC also has the multi-login problem - it gets confused if I log in from my phone and my laptop. To get a persistent history of IRC requires running an external service which is way beyond most users. Slack has mindshare, which leads to having a ton of integrations with other platforms, which just multiplies its effectiveness. I 100% agree that I wish they offered a publicly visible option, so anyone can view without logging in. I also wish they natively supported self-registration. I have to echo another commenter on here. If you want the best of all worlds, a forum is what you're looking for. Publicly visible, easily linkable, long form, asychronous communication. Whether that's google groups or something else is up to you.

daenney 10y ago
> IRC also has the multi-login problem - it gets confused if I log in from my phone and my laptop. To get a persistent history of IRC requires running an external service which is way beyond most users. This part I really do find annoying about IRC. I use IRC by far the most but this still gets me. Even if you run it in a screen somewhere it's a hassle from a mobile device. There's solutions for all of it, but you have to string a series of things together to get to something just about every other option offers you out of the box. Unless you have a particular need for IRC or have used it for a while and know how to deal with it, the other options are more appealing to newcomers. Depending on how young your project or community is that can make all the difference.
Sanddancer 10y ago
Slack gets a lot worse once you want to start dealing with two teams using it. With most IRC clients, I can have connections to multiple servers running, and able to see at a glance everywhere that there's activity. With Slack/Discord/etc, that involves a frenzy of clicking as you look through each group of chats individually. I can lay things out how I want, move things around, etc. Slack, fortunately, has bridges built in for IRC and XMPP clients, so I can use my already working clients instead of having to keep another web page open to another javascript-laden nightmare.
- ptman 9y ago
  I think slack calls them gateways, not bridges. And if you compare to matrix bridges, gateway seems like a suitable name.
- u801e 9y ago
  > Slack, fortunately, has bridges built in for IRC and XMPP clients, so I can use my already working clients Unfortunately, the Slack gateway implementation is subpar. In my experience, it will send me the last message I sent before I disconnected when I reconnect, but it won't send any of the other messages that were sent in the meantime. The other problem is that group chat only works over the IRC gateway, not the XMPP one (at least I could join it from my XMPP client, but I couldn't send any messages to it). In contrast, the old XMPP server we used would just replay messages in group chat when you reconnected, so at least you wouldn't miss anything when you weren't connected. Edit: s/Slack implementation/the Slack gateway implementation/
u801e 9y ago
> Mailing lists by themselves are terrible, because there's no history. You can't scroll up to find context for the conversation. You can get public archives, but then where you actually use the mailing list and where you go to look at history are completely separate, which is a terrible UX. Gmane actually works really well at addressing the problems you describe in terms history. Their NNTP gateway allowed me to download and search the git mailing list messages since 2009 in my email/news client.

by NateDad 10y ago

daenney 10y ago

> IRC also has the multi-login problem - it gets confused if I log in from my phone and my laptop. To get a persistent history of IRC requires running an external service which is way beyond most users. This part I really do find annoying about IRC. I use IRC by far the most but this still gets me. Even if you run it in a screen somewhere it's a hassle from a mobile device. There's solutions for all of it, but you have to string a series of things together to get to something just about every other option offers you out of the box. Unless you have a particular need for IRC or have used it for a while and know how to deal with it, the other options are more appealing to newcomers. Depending on how young your project or community is that can make all the difference.

Sanddancer 10y ago

Slack gets a lot worse once you want to start dealing with two teams using it. With most IRC clients, I can have connections to multiple servers running, and able to see at a glance everywhere that there's activity. With Slack/Discord/etc, that involves a frenzy of clicking as you look through each group of chats individually. I can lay things out how I want, move things around, etc. Slack, fortunately, has bridges built in for IRC and XMPP clients, so I can use my already working clients instead of having to keep another web page open to another javascript-laden nightmare.

ptman 9y ago
I think slack calls them gateways, not bridges. And if you compare to matrix bridges, gateway seems like a suitable name.
u801e 9y ago
> Slack, fortunately, has bridges built in for IRC and XMPP clients, so I can use my already working clients Unfortunately, the Slack gateway implementation is subpar. In my experience, it will send me the last message I sent before I disconnected when I reconnect, but it won't send any of the other messages that were sent in the meantime. The other problem is that group chat only works over the IRC gateway, not the XMPP one (at least I could join it from my XMPP client, but I couldn't send any messages to it). In contrast, the old XMPP server we used would just replay messages in group chat when you reconnected, so at least you wouldn't miss anything when you weren't connected. Edit: s/Slack implementation/the Slack gateway implementation/

u801e 9y ago

> Mailing lists by themselves are terrible, because there's no history. You can't scroll up to find context for the conversation. You can get public archives, but then where you actually use the mailing list and where you go to look at history are completely separate, which is a terrible UX. Gmane actually works really well at addressing the problems you describe in terms history. Their NNTP gateway allowed me to download and search the git mailing list messages since 2009 in my email/news client.