4 ms·

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 solv

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.
- jswny 9y ago
  I'm not really sure about the adoption rate, but Elixir definitely has a Discord: https://discord.me/elixir-lang https://discord.me/elixir-lang.
  - unabst 9y ago
    Yes! This needs to be on here: http://elixir.community/talk http://elixir.community/talk
ryandvm 9y ago
Totally agree. Slack is starting to show the early symptoms of WinAmp Syndrome. When you have too much money and a large enough product team, the path of least resistance seems to be: keep them busy building as many features as they can. The end result is that a product that was successful _because_ of its simplicity loses its primary appeal and switches to a business model predicated on networking effect and/or marketing. Sadly, WinAmp Syndrome is usually fatal.
geodel 9y ago
Well atleast for me slack is cumbersome to use. When someone sends a few dozen lines of text, it needlessly formats and previews only few lines and whatnot instead of giving plain dump of text. Today while working on production issue i sent an XML file to team member but again due to formatting in slack it turned useless and I had to put my xml in file and mail it as attachment. I guess I am just not sophisticated user to configure it to my requirements.
- Andrex 9y ago
  You can surround multiline code with triple backticks (`) to preserve formatting. Though for whole XML files I'd suggest just uploading it to the chat.
- melq 9y ago
  I'm somewhat in the same boat in terms of not being a very sophisticated user, and thus being unaware of alot of features. (I recently started at a new company and am accustomed to IRC) Over time though, you get used to it, and it is imho much less cumbersome to use than any alternatives (certainly IRC). Need to send a large XML file? Hit the plus button next to where you type messages. Want to just dump it to chat? Surround in triple backticks.
fosk 9y ago
I haven't used Flowdock in years, but I remember their Threads feature was awesome. Threads would appear in the main chat, with different colors, and clicking on them would highlight the entire thread. https://www.flowdock.com/help/chat#threads https://www.flowdock.com/help/chat#threads

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.
jswny 9y ago
I'm not really sure about the adoption rate, but Elixir definitely has a Discord: https://discord.me/elixir-lang https://discord.me/elixir-lang.
- unabst 9y ago
  Yes! This needs to be on here: http://elixir.community/talk http://elixir.community/talk

ryandvm 9y ago

Totally agree. Slack is starting to show the early symptoms of WinAmp Syndrome. When you have too much money and a large enough product team, the path of least resistance seems to be: keep them busy building as many features as they can. The end result is that a product that was successful _because_ of its simplicity loses its primary appeal and switches to a business model predicated on networking effect and/or marketing. Sadly, WinAmp Syndrome is usually fatal.

geodel 9y ago

Well atleast for me slack is cumbersome to use. When someone sends a few dozen lines of text, it needlessly formats and previews only few lines and whatnot instead of giving plain dump of text. Today while working on production issue i sent an XML file to team member but again due to formatting in slack it turned useless and I had to put my xml in file and mail it as attachment. I guess I am just not sophisticated user to configure it to my requirements.

Andrex 9y ago
You can surround multiline code with triple backticks (`) to preserve formatting. Though for whole XML files I'd suggest just uploading it to the chat.
melq 9y ago
I'm somewhat in the same boat in terms of not being a very sophisticated user, and thus being unaware of alot of features. (I recently started at a new company and am accustomed to IRC) Over time though, you get used to it, and it is imho much less cumbersome to use than any alternatives (certainly IRC). Need to send a large XML file? Hit the plus button next to where you type messages. Want to just dump it to chat? Surround in triple backticks.

fosk 9y ago

I haven't used Flowdock in years, but I remember their Threads feature was awesome. Threads would appear in the main chat, with different colors, and clicking on them would highlight the entire thread. https://www.flowdock.com/help/chat#threads https://www.flowdock.com/help/chat#threads