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I'd be interested to know how widely used these gateways are, since the conventional wisdom on HN is so frequently "vote with your wallet/feet/personal data".

by rovek 9y ago

I'd be interested to know how widely used these gateways are, since the conventional wisdom on HN is so frequently "vote with your wallet/feet/personal data". As they say: Use it or lose it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ge0rg 9y ago
As a user, I was very disappointed to see that the gateways must be enabled by the project owner, not by the users themselves. In the end none of the Slack groups I've participated in allowed me to connect via IRC/XMPP.
- herbst 9y ago
  Pretty sure enabling these by default would lead to a moderation nightmare in many groups.
  - ge0rg 9y ago
    I don't see how. You would still need to authenticate with that group, so it wouldn't automatically allow anonymous participants from the Internets.
  - calcifer 9y ago
    Slack is an in-company chat product (their slogan is literally “where work happens” [1]) and it was never intended for public groups, which is why all invite automation tools for Slack are third-party. Slack doesn’t want you to use their product as a public chatroom and they try really hard to make that as unattractive as possible. Given that, “moderation nightmare” is not really a concern for the target audience since if your company needs moderation in its work chat, you have much bigger problems. [1] https://slack.com/ https://slack.com/
gsich 9y ago
It's disabled by default. So enabling it requires effort. Then again, Slack didn't advertise those gateways. It's designed with termination in mind.
- loceng 9y ago
  Well, "... is designed with termination in mind" is an assumption, it certainly sounds designed to reduce adoption/use of it.
  - TremendousJudge 9y ago
    it stops being an assumption once the termination actually happens
    - loceng 9y ago
      No, it's still an assumption - the outcome perhaps is what a person expects will happen, however that doesn't then validate a past assumption - it does validate their past belief/prediction/expectation though.
      - gsich 9y ago
        It was an assumption before. Now it's a fact.
        monadgonad 9y ago
        No it's not. You're conflating "it was terminated" with "it was designed with termination in mind". It's a fact that it was terminated, true, but this doesn't necessarily mean that it was designed with termination in mind. For all we know, it may have been designed with every intention of continuing IRC/XMPP support until yesterday when an executive decision suddenly said otherwise. Now, I don't believe that, but that doesn't matter: the fact that it was terminated is not the fact that it was designed with termination in mind.
Rudism 9y ago
I can't answer the broader question, but I did attempt to use the XMPP gateway for a little while. Many features were implemented in ways that made them hard or impossible to follow when viewed via XMPP (threading was a big one), and there were a fair number of bugs. It very much felt like a tacked-on feature as opposed to something they would have expected to be used in a meaningful way.

by rovek 9y ago

I'd be interested to know how widely used these gateways are, since the conventional wisdom on HN is so frequently "vote with your wallet/feet/personal data". As they say: Use it or lose it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ge0rg 9y ago

As a user, I was very disappointed to see that the gateways must be enabled by the project owner, not by the users themselves. In the end none of the Slack groups I've participated in allowed me to connect via IRC/XMPP.

herbst 9y ago
Pretty sure enabling these by default would lead to a moderation nightmare in many groups.
- ge0rg 9y ago
  I don't see how. You would still need to authenticate with that group, so it wouldn't automatically allow anonymous participants from the Internets.
- calcifer 9y ago
  Slack is an in-company chat product (their slogan is literally “where work happens” [1]) and it was never intended for public groups, which is why all invite automation tools for Slack are third-party. Slack doesn’t want you to use their product as a public chatroom and they try really hard to make that as unattractive as possible. Given that, “moderation nightmare” is not really a concern for the target audience since if your company needs moderation in its work chat, you have much bigger problems. [1] https://slack.com/ https://slack.com/

gsich 9y ago

It's disabled by default. So enabling it requires effort. Then again, Slack didn't advertise those gateways. It's designed with termination in mind.

loceng 9y ago
Well, "... is designed with termination in mind" is an assumption, it certainly sounds designed to reduce adoption/use of it.
- TremendousJudge 9y ago
  it stops being an assumption once the termination actually happens
  - loceng 9y ago
    No, it's still an assumption - the outcome perhaps is what a person expects will happen, however that doesn't then validate a past assumption - it does validate their past belief/prediction/expectation though.
    - gsich 9y ago
      It was an assumption before. Now it's a fact.
      - monadgonad 9y ago
        No it's not. You're conflating "it was terminated" with "it was designed with termination in mind". It's a fact that it was terminated, true, but this doesn't necessarily mean that it was designed with termination in mind. For all we know, it may have been designed with every intention of continuing IRC/XMPP support until yesterday when an executive decision suddenly said otherwise. Now, I don't believe that, but that doesn't matter: the fact that it was terminated is not the fact that it was designed with termination in mind.

Rudism 9y ago

I can't answer the broader question, but I did attempt to use the XMPP gateway for a little while. Many features were implemented in ways that made them hard or impossible to follow when viewed via XMPP (threading was a big one), and there were a fair number of bugs. It very much felt like a tacked-on feature as opposed to something they would have expected to be used in a meaningful way.