I love that Slack exists. I don't see any need to use it myself. It provides a great honeypot for the Eternal September influx. IRC is (to steal Metacity's s

I love that Slack exists. I don't see any need to use it myself. It provides a great honeypot for the Eternal September influx. IRC is (to steal Metacity's slogan) like Cheerios. (Yes, I used Slack for a while, at a company I worked for. I found it technically unimpressive, and the UI seems to be designed primarily to encourage every channel to descend into emoji and memes, and to maximize distraction.) I find the lack of logging/search on IRC to be a feature. I think people are more open in a community when they know they're not going to be hyper-analyzed by strangers on the internet in the distant future. There do exist IRC loggers, but I think most of the channels I frequent don't allow them.