8 ms·

Introducing Highlights

76 points by isabellat 9y ago

dbingham 9y ago
They're doing it based on engagement? Great.. it's just going to surface the jokes. Seriously, there's a lot of important information that passes through our slack channels, but, for the most part, we don't "engage" with it in the way they are measuring. We don't react, reply, click on, or share the important messages. We just respond to them in the normal flow of conversation. The jokes, wit, and quips on the other hand... those get reacted to. So there's a good chance those are going to be the highlights. Which, while fun, is a complete waste of screen real estate and isn't going to help me be more productive.
- jarrettch 9y ago
  This is what I'm afraid of. By far the most reacted/responded to messages are the Happy Birthday/Anniversary shoutouts, the @channel letting everyone know the coffee machine is working again or donuts in the kitchen, memes, etc. When our DB is being updated, or our staging instance is gonna be down briefly, or "Here's an article about security updates just released for x," there isn't huge engagement. You know, stuff that actually affects my work as a dev. I really don't want to see highlights of "@channel can someone dog sit for the weekend? here are pictures!" or similar things that aren't pertinent to work.
- polpo 9y ago
  Yeah, the first thing Highlights brought up for me this morning was some image posted in our company's #random channel. Uh, thanks?
- benologist 9y ago
  I guess the good news is once buzzfeed et al find a way to appropriate all that attention your highlights will stop being pointless stuff people said.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I was about to say that that's not totally inappropriate for a chat service originally designed for gaming. Then I remembered I was thinking of Discord, which to me is better than Slack at most of the things I use Slack for. So...yeah, that's a weird decision for Slack.
- _jtrig 9y ago
  This is a problem everywhere not just in Slack.. politics, forums, social media etc
dijit 9y ago
if this is anything at all like 'twitter highlights' it will be cumbersome and in the way. Especially if I get prompted to read them- I hope they are configurable unlike so many other components in slack too.
water42 9y ago
they should make the search usable first
- pilsetnieks 9y ago
  What's wrong with their search? It's pretty good for a non-Google company.
- leesalminen 9y ago
  I feel like it's gotten better over the past year.
AznHisoka 9y ago
Slack doesnt need anymore features. Just let me chat and stop making me learn new ways to do things.
- robbiemitchell 9y ago
  Just like email replaced phones as the go-to method of business communication, chat is doing that to email -- at least in some types of companies and teams. But it's not just chat. With interactive messages, Slack is becoming more like an OS for communications and business processes. And there are seemingly infinite ways for it to evolve to better serve the needs of just about anyone using it to communicate with others.
- EduardoBautista 9y ago
  > Slack doesnt need anymore features. How about a native desktop app.
  - inopinatus 9y ago
    Honestly I'd rather have a native ncurses app.
    - tomlong 9y ago
      Check out Wee-Slack[1], it's as close as you're likely to get for now. Note this does not use the IRC gateway, but it plugs the slack API into WeeChat, and supports most slack functionality not found with the IRC gateway. [1]https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack/blob/master/README.md
  - ggreer 9y ago
    Or a full-fledged API so that anyone can write a Slack client. Currently, anyone who wants to write a 3rd-party client has to use the IRC bridge. That doesn't have the same capabilities as Slack's client.
    - 9y ago
eggie5 9y ago
They use sampling to "preserve a fixed ratio of positive to negative examples." I wonder what the ratio is... isn't the technique w/ class imbalances to up-sample/subsample to get a 50/50 ratio so your classifier generalizes? On the topic of feature engineering: I think the use of those inline-emojis on a message are a good indicator of importance. That could be another feature for the logistic regression. Overall seems like a fun modeling challenge. It's nice to see people not just throw deep learning at the problem...
- saghm 9y ago
  > I think the use of those inline-emojis on a message are a good indicator of importance. That could be another feature for the logistic regression. Upon first reading that, I thought you meant that more emojis implies more importance, and I was very curious about what kind of conversations you and your peers were having on Slack
bajsejohannes 9y ago
> Predicting which messages are most likely to be important is a challenging technical problem I think this is much better solved as a social problem. Use mentions sparingly so they have value and have company conventions about what's expected to be read/skimmed/ignored. Seems like a case of fitting a solution to a problem.
- bqe 9y ago
  I agree. It sounds like they had some ML people who were itching to implement something and this is what they came up with.
huebnerob 9y ago
At the risk of sounding geriatric, I think Slack is too complicated. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was threads. I've not yet seen a thread solve a problem that a channel would have otherwise had, but I've seen plenty of confusion from the added orthogonal dimension and the general orphaned nature of messages in threads. Now, as is customary, they're putting the training wheels on their too-complex product.
- flavor8 9y ago
  Threads would be useful if implemented more clearly. Having to go to a separate tab from the channel they were initiated in, and/or scroll way back up, is confusing; and the replies-hidden-by-default is also confusing.
- unabst 9y ago
  > The straw that broke the camel's back for me was threads. Me too. The all threads list being in opposite chronological order as the all unread list blew my mind also. So I've moved everything to discord and have never been happier. Faster, smoother, chat as it should be, with no 10,000 message limit and broken search. I really wish every public slack group would switch (like Elixir and others). With a 10,000 message limit and 700+ users online, it's practically snapchat... Not to mention webhooks being dead simple and dead awesome. --- https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/ https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/ https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/
  - satsuma 9y ago
    Discord really is a fantastic group messaging app, if they dropped the gaming branding or made a "business" version that has the gaming features dropped they could make a run to pick up any users Slack loses.
    - mpeg 9y ago
      I think the community-ran nature of it makes it super hard to discover new discord communities though, and it leads to duplication where new games have a bunch of communities pop up that divide the userbase. I know there's third party sites that act as directories but it's a bit of a hassle, I wish they'd have two separate products, the gaming one with a public directory and one to create private communities that can be used for other purposes.
Raphmedia 9y ago
Any good Slack alternative for communities? We have a big community and are looking for a chat client but there is no way that we would be willing to pay $5/user when we have up to 1000 users.
- sytse 9y ago
  Mattermost for multiple channels and gitter for single channel. Disclosure: GitLab ships with Mattermost and owns gitter
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    We really wanted to go with Gitter but limiting sign-up to Github and Twitter is a big no for us. :(
    - yuhong 9y ago
      I wonder how long before they add GitLab sign-in.
- woodrowbarlow 9y ago
  http://rocket.chat http://rocket.chat is an open-source self-hosted (or pay for hosting) slack clone. the client has some bugs, but it's totally usable.
- notatoad 9y ago
  Slack's free tier? if you don't need a full archive, it works fine.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    Are the issues in this blogpost still present? https://medium.freecodecamp.com/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it-391bcc714c81 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-w...
- satsuma 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dirtylowprofile 9y ago
I don't care about this really. All I want is just a fluid, fast desktop app that won't make my MBP overheat. Is that too much to ask? =(
- symlinkk 9y ago
  Use IRC. Now you see open standards are good. Anyone can make a client.
draw_down 9y ago
Every time they introduce a new feature, people at work start using it so I have to try to understand it. I still find the threading confusing.
wst_ 9y ago
They should decrease memory usage first for desktop app. I hope you can disable this highlights.
justin 9y ago
I wish Slack would just fix core functionality like badges (if I open the room they should go away) and notifications (if I read the message on one platform, don't send me notifications for that message 5 minutes later on another platform). Those are the features I want.

76 points by isabellat 9y ago

They're doing it based on engagement? Great.. it's just going to surface the jokes. Seriously, there's a lot of important information that passes through our slack channels, but, for the most part, we don't "engage" with it in the way they are measuring. We don't react, reply, click on, or share the important messages. We just respond to them in the normal flow of conversation. The jokes, wit, and quips on the other hand... those get reacted to. So there's a good chance those are going to be the highlights. Which, while fun, is a complete waste of screen real estate and isn't going to help me be more productive.

jarrettch 9y ago
This is what I'm afraid of. By far the most reacted/responded to messages are the Happy Birthday/Anniversary shoutouts, the @channel letting everyone know the coffee machine is working again or donuts in the kitchen, memes, etc. When our DB is being updated, or our staging instance is gonna be down briefly, or "Here's an article about security updates just released for x," there isn't huge engagement. You know, stuff that actually affects my work as a dev. I really don't want to see highlights of "@channel can someone dog sit for the weekend? here are pictures!" or similar things that aren't pertinent to work.
polpo 9y ago
Yeah, the first thing Highlights brought up for me this morning was some image posted in our company's #random channel. Uh, thanks?
benologist 9y ago
I guess the good news is once buzzfeed et al find a way to appropriate all that attention your highlights will stop being pointless stuff people said.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I was about to say that that's not totally inappropriate for a chat service originally designed for gaming. Then I remembered I was thinking of Discord, which to me is better than Slack at most of the things I use Slack for. So...yeah, that's a weird decision for Slack.
_jtrig 9y ago
This is a problem everywhere not just in Slack.. politics, forums, social media etc

dijit 9y ago

if this is anything at all like 'twitter highlights' it will be cumbersome and in the way. Especially if I get prompted to read them- I hope they are configurable unlike so many other components in slack too.

water42 9y ago

they should make the search usable first

pilsetnieks 9y ago
What's wrong with their search? It's pretty good for a non-Google company.
leesalminen 9y ago
I feel like it's gotten better over the past year.

AznHisoka 9y ago

Slack doesnt need anymore features. Just let me chat and stop making me learn new ways to do things.

robbiemitchell 9y ago
Just like email replaced phones as the go-to method of business communication, chat is doing that to email -- at least in some types of companies and teams. But it's not just chat. With interactive messages, Slack is becoming more like an OS for communications and business processes. And there are seemingly infinite ways for it to evolve to better serve the needs of just about anyone using it to communicate with others.
EduardoBautista 9y ago
> Slack doesnt need anymore features. How about a native desktop app.
- inopinatus 9y ago
  Honestly I'd rather have a native ncurses app.
  - tomlong 9y ago
    Check out Wee-Slack[1], it's as close as you're likely to get for now. Note this does not use the IRC gateway, but it plugs the slack API into WeeChat, and supports most slack functionality not found with the IRC gateway. [1]https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack/blob/master/README.md
- ggreer 9y ago
  Or a full-fledged API so that anyone can write a Slack client. Currently, anyone who wants to write a 3rd-party client has to use the IRC bridge. That doesn't have the same capabilities as Slack's client.
  - 9y ago

eggie5 9y ago

They use sampling to "preserve a fixed ratio of positive to negative examples." I wonder what the ratio is... isn't the technique w/ class imbalances to up-sample/subsample to get a 50/50 ratio so your classifier generalizes? On the topic of feature engineering: I think the use of those inline-emojis on a message are a good indicator of importance. That could be another feature for the logistic regression. Overall seems like a fun modeling challenge. It's nice to see people not just throw deep learning at the problem...

saghm 9y ago
> I think the use of those inline-emojis on a message are a good indicator of importance. That could be another feature for the logistic regression. Upon first reading that, I thought you meant that more emojis implies more importance, and I was very curious about what kind of conversations you and your peers were having on Slack

bajsejohannes 9y ago

> Predicting which messages are most likely to be important is a challenging technical problem I think this is much better solved as a social problem. Use mentions sparingly so they have value and have company conventions about what's expected to be read/skimmed/ignored. Seems like a case of fitting a solution to a problem.

bqe 9y ago
I agree. It sounds like they had some ML people who were itching to implement something and this is what they came up with.

huebnerob 9y ago

At the risk of sounding geriatric, I think Slack is too complicated. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was threads. I've not yet seen a thread solve a problem that a channel would have otherwise had, but I've seen plenty of confusion from the added orthogonal dimension and the general orphaned nature of messages in threads. Now, as is customary, they're putting the training wheels on their too-complex product.

flavor8 9y ago
Threads would be useful if implemented more clearly. Having to go to a separate tab from the channel they were initiated in, and/or scroll way back up, is confusing; and the replies-hidden-by-default is also confusing.
unabst 9y ago
> The straw that broke the camel's back for me was threads. Me too. The all threads list being in opposite chronological order as the all unread list blew my mind also. So I've moved everything to discord and have never been happier. Faster, smoother, chat as it should be, with no 10,000 message limit and broken search. I really wish every public slack group would switch (like Elixir and others). With a 10,000 message limit and 700+ users online, it's practically snapchat... Not to mention webhooks being dead simple and dead awesome. --- https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/ https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/ https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/
- satsuma 9y ago
  Discord really is a fantastic group messaging app, if they dropped the gaming branding or made a "business" version that has the gaming features dropped they could make a run to pick up any users Slack loses.
  - mpeg 9y ago
    I think the community-ran nature of it makes it super hard to discover new discord communities though, and it leads to duplication where new games have a bunch of communities pop up that divide the userbase. I know there's third party sites that act as directories but it's a bit of a hassle, I wish they'd have two separate products, the gaming one with a public directory and one to create private communities that can be used for other purposes.

Raphmedia 9y ago

Any good Slack alternative for communities? We have a big community and are looking for a chat client but there is no way that we would be willing to pay $5/user when we have up to 1000 users.

sytse 9y ago
Mattermost for multiple channels and gitter for single channel. Disclosure: GitLab ships with Mattermost and owns gitter
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  We really wanted to go with Gitter but limiting sign-up to Github and Twitter is a big no for us. :(
  - yuhong 9y ago
    I wonder how long before they add GitLab sign-in.
woodrowbarlow 9y ago
http://rocket.chat http://rocket.chat is an open-source self-hosted (or pay for hosting) slack clone. the client has some bugs, but it's totally usable.
notatoad 9y ago
Slack's free tier? if you don't need a full archive, it works fine.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Are the issues in this blogpost still present? https://medium.freecodecamp.com/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it-391bcc714c81 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-w...
satsuma 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dirtylowprofile 9y ago

I don't care about this really. All I want is just a fluid, fast desktop app that won't make my MBP overheat. Is that too much to ask? =(

symlinkk 9y ago
Use IRC. Now you see open standards are good. Anyone can make a client.

draw_down 9y ago

Every time they introduce a new feature, people at work start using it so I have to try to understand it. I still find the threading confusing.

wst_ 9y ago

They should decrease memory usage first for desktop app. I hope you can disable this highlights.

justin 9y ago

I wish Slack would just fix core functionality like badges (if I open the room they should go away) and notifications (if I read the message on one platform, don't send me notifications for that message 5 minutes later on another platform). Those are the features I want.