6 ms·

It's not even that discussions have been lost from search engines, actual slack users are loosing massive amounts of history. If you a free/OSS project then you

It's not even that discussions have been lost from search engines, actual slack users are loosing massive amounts of history. If you a free/OSS project then you likely have little budget so you're stuck using hte free tier of Slack, which means users can only see the last 10,000 messages. We're loosing vast swathes of our history/discussion/media.

RyJones 9y ago
The history isn't searchable, but the owners of the Slack can export the complete public history at any time. Here is an export that I did when we moved Hyperledger to Rocket.Chat: https://github.com/hyperledger/slack-archive https://github.com/hyperledger/slack-archive I see the hosted version is down, though.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Key word: public history. Most of my interesting history is in private chats.
richthegeek 9y ago
So would there be a use-case for a combined bot+app that you can connect some storage to (S3, FTP) which archives all channel message history in a searchable form? It could make it visible to search engines, searchable by humans, linkable to people outside of slack, and shouldn't take up very much storage space. Should be quite trivial to build also, and cheap enough to run as a bit of charity if projects pay for their own storage.
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  For open source developers logs of private 1:1 discussions are also highly valuable, so this would only be a bandaid.
  - herbst 9y ago
    The last company I worked for used small channels for this issue instead of going 1:1, which was more or less reserved for private talk
    - Mithaldu 9y ago
      Gotta admit, as a workaround for the deficiency of "doesn't have local client logging", that one's really funny.
      - BuildTheRobots 9y ago
        Local client logging doesn't solve all problems (though yes, i still want to be able to grep text files if I choose). The two I regularly encounter (which shared storage fixes) is either moving to a different device (or trying to remember which ones have which bits of history on) and also integrating new team members. The latter is especially important if you're doing anything technical/support related; if you've had 2 days of discussions and want to add someone else in, they need the history, not for you to try and cherry pick the important bits of the last few hours to then fail to get them upto speed.
- raffomania 9y ago
  This would be quite the workaround though, completely evading the root of the problem (slack).
- Can_Not 9y ago
  Several slack groups already do this.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  It's trivial to write such a thing, but why would Slack allow that application in their apps?
  - richthegeek 9y ago
    It would be useless for private organisations - the entire purpose is to make ephemeral chat publicly available to search engines. Slack might cut it off, but they gain nothing by doing it.
PakG1 9y ago
This is the main reason why my team switched to use self-hosted Mattermost. Unlimited message history is important for us, but not worth what Slack would cost when something like Mattermost is available. If you're a tech team with people who know Linux, I don't understand why you would choose Slack over something like Mattermost. If you're a small business without a tech team, more understandable.
- omginternets 9y ago
  How did the transition go? We're seriously considering on our end, and trying to anticipate any friction points that might occur. Any caveats, gotchas or hidden complexities to be aware of?
  - PakG1 9y ago
    Honestly, it was so smooth. Deleting old unnecessary channels seems impossible, but whatever. Have all of our chat history migrated over, no complaints. One team member missed the old Slack colour scheme, but he found a Slack skin for Mattermost that makes it look the same for him.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  Have you tried their Zoom voice / screensharing plugin? If so, how well does it work?
  - PakG1 9y ago
    Have not. We don't do much screen sharing among our own team, and external screen sharing is done using other tools. Interested in other people's opinions about it though.
  - praneshp 9y ago
    If you are asking about Slack's Zoom plugin, I used it at a previous job, and it's pretty good. (We were a small team in Sunnyvale, CA, the bulk of the team was in Phoenix, some in Seattle)
maxerickson 9y ago
The one slack I am in has had some discussion of limiting history further than the free limits. It turns out that people don't necessarily want lots of records of everything everywhere.
freefal 9y ago
If you're a free/OSS project and have set up a non-profit, Slack will upgrade you to unlimited messages for free. I know because I'm in such a slack channel (lichess.org).
akoncius 9y ago
you can use https://gitter.im/ https://gitter.im/ , it's free for OSS/free communities
p0nce 9y ago
That's why I use Discord, the free tier has _unlimited_ history. The client itself is lightweight, and it's an incremental improvement on IRC in many other areas, as you would expect. Still using IRC of course :)
- snvzz 9y ago
  >the free tier has _unlimited_ history. I sure do hope this is sarcasm. Surely you do know this can go away at any time.
  - p0nce 9y ago
    Sorry it was not sarcasm. You are right tho, when that happen I'll probably go back to IRC. The problem with better chat is that it's better, so you spend more time on it.
- Crespyl 9y ago
  Discord is an Electron app, so while it's not as bad as Slack, it's still hardly what I'd call lightweight, especially in comparison to IRC/XMPP clients. There's a lot to like in Discord, and it rapidly became the go to client for all my gaming related friends and activities, but it suffers from the same root pitfalls that Slack always has. It will inevitably run out of VC money (or whatever they're spending now) at some point and start wanting to actually turn a profit.
  - indigodaddy 9y ago
    I imagine this problem would be remedied by an acquisition.. or at least masked... Twitch (Amazon) seems a likely candidate, considering it's usage by Twitch users, and also the fact that Amazon doesn't really have skin in the game currently in the chat market (do they?), and could use a product like Discord in their ecosystem.
    - Uristqwerty 9y ago
      Some time ago, Twitch bought Curse, probably for the Curse App that already does voice and text chat. Also viewing streams and mod management for a handful of games.
toss1 9y ago
Exactly! As pointed out in the article: "Slack's business model is to record everything said in a workspace and then to sell you access to their record of your conversations." Slack recognizes, unfortunately before most of it's customers, that the history is one of the most important assets of a company -- it is the shared institutional knowledge, the thousands of hard-won lessons of all the things that can go wrong that are now fixed, and how they were fixed. This institutional knowledge is not only in the heads of the workers, but also in the papers, and many would need, or at least benefit from, a lookup of the details to re-use that knowledge. This institutional knowledge is a key competitive advantage of almost every company. This business model of capturing it and rent-seeking on selling it back to them is a devil's bargain. "Here's this really slick UI for free, only costs a bit later... nevermind that we'll own the soul of your company and you'll need to pay us tribute in perpetuity..."

RyJones 9y ago

The history isn't searchable, but the owners of the Slack can export the complete public history at any time. Here is an export that I did when we moved Hyperledger to Rocket.Chat: https://github.com/hyperledger/slack-archive https://github.com/hyperledger/slack-archive I see the hosted version is down, though.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Key word: public history. Most of my interesting history is in private chats.

richthegeek 9y ago

So would there be a use-case for a combined bot+app that you can connect some storage to (S3, FTP) which archives all channel message history in a searchable form? It could make it visible to search engines, searchable by humans, linkable to people outside of slack, and shouldn't take up very much storage space. Should be quite trivial to build also, and cheap enough to run as a bit of charity if projects pay for their own storage.

Mithaldu 9y ago
For open source developers logs of private 1:1 discussions are also highly valuable, so this would only be a bandaid.
- herbst 9y ago
  The last company I worked for used small channels for this issue instead of going 1:1, which was more or less reserved for private talk
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    Gotta admit, as a workaround for the deficiency of "doesn't have local client logging", that one's really funny.
    - BuildTheRobots 9y ago
      Local client logging doesn't solve all problems (though yes, i still want to be able to grep text files if I choose). The two I regularly encounter (which shared storage fixes) is either moving to a different device (or trying to remember which ones have which bits of history on) and also integrating new team members. The latter is especially important if you're doing anything technical/support related; if you've had 2 days of discussions and want to add someone else in, they need the history, not for you to try and cherry pick the important bits of the last few hours to then fail to get them upto speed.
raffomania 9y ago
This would be quite the workaround though, completely evading the root of the problem (slack).
Can_Not 9y ago
Several slack groups already do this.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
It's trivial to write such a thing, but why would Slack allow that application in their apps?
- richthegeek 9y ago
  It would be useless for private organisations - the entire purpose is to make ephemeral chat publicly available to search engines. Slack might cut it off, but they gain nothing by doing it.

PakG1 9y ago

This is the main reason why my team switched to use self-hosted Mattermost. Unlimited message history is important for us, but not worth what Slack would cost when something like Mattermost is available. If you're a tech team with people who know Linux, I don't understand why you would choose Slack over something like Mattermost. If you're a small business without a tech team, more understandable.

omginternets 9y ago
How did the transition go? We're seriously considering on our end, and trying to anticipate any friction points that might occur. Any caveats, gotchas or hidden complexities to be aware of?
- PakG1 9y ago
  Honestly, it was so smooth. Deleting old unnecessary channels seems impossible, but whatever. Have all of our chat history migrated over, no complaints. One team member missed the old Slack colour scheme, but he found a Slack skin for Mattermost that makes it look the same for him.
m_mueller 9y ago
Have you tried their Zoom voice / screensharing plugin? If so, how well does it work?
- PakG1 9y ago
  Have not. We don't do much screen sharing among our own team, and external screen sharing is done using other tools. Interested in other people's opinions about it though.
- praneshp 9y ago
  If you are asking about Slack's Zoom plugin, I used it at a previous job, and it's pretty good. (We were a small team in Sunnyvale, CA, the bulk of the team was in Phoenix, some in Seattle)

maxerickson 9y ago

The one slack I am in has had some discussion of limiting history further than the free limits. It turns out that people don't necessarily want lots of records of everything everywhere.

freefal 9y ago

If you're a free/OSS project and have set up a non-profit, Slack will upgrade you to unlimited messages for free. I know because I'm in such a slack channel (lichess.org).

akoncius 9y ago

you can use https://gitter.im/ https://gitter.im/ , it's free for OSS/free communities

p0nce 9y ago

That's why I use Discord, the free tier has _unlimited_ history. The client itself is lightweight, and it's an incremental improvement on IRC in many other areas, as you would expect. Still using IRC of course :)

snvzz 9y ago
>the free tier has _unlimited_ history. I sure do hope this is sarcasm. Surely you do know this can go away at any time.
- p0nce 9y ago
  Sorry it was not sarcasm. You are right tho, when that happen I'll probably go back to IRC. The problem with better chat is that it's better, so you spend more time on it.
Crespyl 9y ago
Discord is an Electron app, so while it's not as bad as Slack, it's still hardly what I'd call lightweight, especially in comparison to IRC/XMPP clients. There's a lot to like in Discord, and it rapidly became the go to client for all my gaming related friends and activities, but it suffers from the same root pitfalls that Slack always has. It will inevitably run out of VC money (or whatever they're spending now) at some point and start wanting to actually turn a profit.
- indigodaddy 9y ago
  I imagine this problem would be remedied by an acquisition.. or at least masked... Twitch (Amazon) seems a likely candidate, considering it's usage by Twitch users, and also the fact that Amazon doesn't really have skin in the game currently in the chat market (do they?), and could use a product like Discord in their ecosystem.
  - Uristqwerty 9y ago
    Some time ago, Twitch bought Curse, probably for the Curse App that already does voice and text chat. Also viewing streams and mod management for a handful of games.

toss1 9y ago

Exactly! As pointed out in the article: "Slack's business model is to record everything said in a workspace and then to sell you access to their record of your conversations." Slack recognizes, unfortunately before most of it's customers, that the history is one of the most important assets of a company -- it is the shared institutional knowledge, the thousands of hard-won lessons of all the things that can go wrong that are now fixed, and how they were fixed. This institutional knowledge is not only in the heads of the workers, but also in the papers, and many would need, or at least benefit from, a lookup of the details to re-use that knowledge. This institutional knowledge is a key competitive advantage of almost every company. This business model of capturing it and rent-seeking on selling it back to them is a devil's bargain. "Here's this really slick UI for free, only costs a bit later... nevermind that we'll own the soul of your company and you'll need to pay us tribute in perpetuity..."