6 ms·

No. Slack is ok for chatting and quickly sharing stuff, but not for longer, more thoughtful, drawn out, asynchronous discussions.

by davidw 7y ago

chiefalchemist 7y ago
Fair enough, but off all your communications how much of it falls into this category? 20%? What about for the average Joe/Jane? I'll go out on a limb and say even less. Email is a walkie-talkie. It's a fax machine. Yes, it still works. But it's sweet spot is getting smaller and smaller.
simonw 7y ago
I find this varies between people. I have co-workers with whom I've had fantastic, multiple-day drawn-out asynchronous discussions on Slack. I have other co-workers for whom this form of communication fails completely. I'm not sure if this is a learnable skill or if it's down to something fundamental connected to different people's communication styles.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  I used to lament there were folks who insisted on talking on the phone, when I needed requirements written down to refer to later. Both approaches have merit at times.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dheera 7y ago
  There is definitely an aspect to learn. I have had co-workers who routinely message on Slack, and if they don't get a response within 60 seconds, they get up, go to my desk and bother me -- in the middle of coding. Cumulatively lost likely several months of progress to this.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
As much as I've embraced Slack, I just don't see it replacing an entire open protocol, with one proprietary product. If anybody was close to this, it definitely would of been MSN Messenger at one point. Everyone I knew had MSN Messenger, and would check their inbox from the IM client. Unless we start seeing @slackmail.com or something and they make a very powerful mail client, but I havent see Slack do much period, it's taking how long just to add dark mode into Slack across platforms? I feel like nothing visible is being done by Slack. To be fair it does work, but new things would be nice to see. I don't think you'll be able to replace the likely massive market share that gmail / hotmail / yahoo has.
maccard 7y ago
There's nothing stopping you using slack for thoughtful drawn our discussions. My experience is that in slack the people who send quickfire messages are the people who send quickfire emails, and the people who send thought emails send thought our slack messages. The big advantage of slack (to me) is that people use channels, and it avoids the "I mailed X and Z, but forgot to CC y in on this", where people routinely selectively email people when really more people should be aware.
- minitech 7y ago
  > There's nothing stopping you using slack for thoughtful drawn our discussions. Nothing but the UI… limited formatting, poor suitability of threads to the purpose, and so on. It’s designed around chat messages.
  - maccard 7y ago
    I don't disagree it's designed for chat but I do disagree with your other points. It supports a subset of markdown which are the important ones (quotes, unformatted, lists) and ignores things like headings and colouring. I like the limited support. I think threads are great - they allow you to have a side discussion based on a single message with context for anyone who has access to the channel they happen in. Compared to those gigantic email chains where you have 3 or 4 groups having differing conversations in the same thread by quoting what they're replying to...
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      It doesn't matter. It makes synchronous, quick communication easy, so that's what people do. Email forces you to communicate thoughtfully, Slack encourages snap responses.
      - maccard 7y ago
        > Email forces you to communicate thoughtfully, I wholeheartedly disagree. My inbox is full of emails with subjects and no body, one-line half baked questions, non-responses, incorrect information in a body of correct information that gets lost in the sea of noise, broken formatting that render massive email chains totally unreadable. Often times those massive chains of emails have totally diverged from the initial subject and people on the mail.
jpalomaki 7y ago
Should we get Google Wave back? Not that I remember how it was exactly.. Maybe something that combines Slack and collaborative editing (like Google Docs). It might work if you could just in the middle of the chat switch from discussion to editing a document. This should be somehow integrated experience, happening inside the same tool.
- gaogao 7y ago
  At my current place, that manifests as just linking to a Google Doc in a chat thread and moving the writing over there.
  - jakecopp 7y ago
    Or a Confluence document in my experience.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      Yeah; in my experience Confluence is the de-facto architecture repo.
BeetleB 7y ago
>Slack is ok for chatting and quickly sharing stuff, but not for longer, more thoughtful, drawn out, asynchronous discussions. The reality is that in my workplace, it's hard to get longer, more thoughtful, drawn out discussions via email anyway. If I write an email that is more than 2 paragraphs, it very often does not get read. And it almost never gets an equally thoughtful response. I haven't internalized my lesson - I still sometimes write long emails. But 90+% of the times I won't get a response. And when I do, 90+% are going to be 1-2 liners. Don't get me wrong. I like email and simply don't do chat. My work chat tool used to say something to the effect of "If you're in the building I won't respond. Come to me in person or send me an email". I like email so much that I put in significant effort[1] in making my email experience better. Now you've given me an idea for my next project. Autorespond to emails that contain less than 130 characters with "Sorry, I prefer well thought out emails, and your email is too short to warrant my attention." In all seriousness, I probably won't do it - can't think of a way to do it without annoying them. But I do recall an email exchange I had with an old friend, and at one point I sent this email: > Dear old friend, > In 3 emails, you wrote a sum total of 12 words. > For someone as well read as you, please ponder over this. :-) > You were once insistent on preserving the quality of writing - at least in books and novels, and decried the decline that arose with mass paperback fiction. Do you now complain that tweets are too long? (He never responded). [1] http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2018/Sep/solving-my-email-problem/ http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2018/Sep/solving-my-email-proble...
- cm2012 7y ago
  I'm like you and love long emails. The vast majority of people are more likely to read and respond to short emails though.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tempguy9999 7y ago
I miss newsgroups.

No. Slack is ok for chatting and quickly sharing stuff, but not for longer, more thoughtful, drawn out, asynchronous discussions.

by davidw 7y ago

No. Slack is ok for chatting and quickly sharing stuff, but not for longer, more thoughtful, drawn out, asynchronous discussions.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Fair enough, but off all your communications how much of it falls into this category? 20%? What about for the average Joe/Jane? I'll go out on a limb and say even less. Email is a walkie-talkie. It's a fax machine. Yes, it still works. But it's sweet spot is getting smaller and smaller.

simonw 7y ago

I find this varies between people. I have co-workers with whom I've had fantastic, multiple-day drawn-out asynchronous discussions on Slack. I have other co-workers for whom this form of communication fails completely. I'm not sure if this is a learnable skill or if it's down to something fundamental connected to different people's communication styles.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
I used to lament there were folks who insisted on talking on the phone, when I needed requirements written down to refer to later. Both approaches have merit at times.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dheera 7y ago
There is definitely an aspect to learn. I have had co-workers who routinely message on Slack, and if they don't get a response within 60 seconds, they get up, go to my desk and bother me -- in the middle of coding. Cumulatively lost likely several months of progress to this.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

As much as I've embraced Slack, I just don't see it replacing an entire open protocol, with one proprietary product. If anybody was close to this, it definitely would of been MSN Messenger at one point. Everyone I knew had MSN Messenger, and would check their inbox from the IM client. Unless we start seeing @slackmail.com or something and they make a very powerful mail client, but I havent see Slack do much period, it's taking how long just to add dark mode into Slack across platforms? I feel like nothing visible is being done by Slack. To be fair it does work, but new things would be nice to see. I don't think you'll be able to replace the likely massive market share that gmail / hotmail / yahoo has.

maccard 7y ago

There's nothing stopping you using slack for thoughtful drawn our discussions. My experience is that in slack the people who send quickfire messages are the people who send quickfire emails, and the people who send thought emails send thought our slack messages. The big advantage of slack (to me) is that people use channels, and it avoids the "I mailed X and Z, but forgot to CC y in on this", where people routinely selectively email people when really more people should be aware.

minitech 7y ago
> There's nothing stopping you using slack for thoughtful drawn our discussions. Nothing but the UI… limited formatting, poor suitability of threads to the purpose, and so on. It’s designed around chat messages.
- maccard 7y ago
  I don't disagree it's designed for chat but I do disagree with your other points. It supports a subset of markdown which are the important ones (quotes, unformatted, lists) and ignores things like headings and colouring. I like the limited support. I think threads are great - they allow you to have a side discussion based on a single message with context for anyone who has access to the channel they happen in. Compared to those gigantic email chains where you have 3 or 4 groups having differing conversations in the same thread by quoting what they're replying to...
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    It doesn't matter. It makes synchronous, quick communication easy, so that's what people do. Email forces you to communicate thoughtfully, Slack encourages snap responses.
    - maccard 7y ago
      > Email forces you to communicate thoughtfully, I wholeheartedly disagree. My inbox is full of emails with subjects and no body, one-line half baked questions, non-responses, incorrect information in a body of correct information that gets lost in the sea of noise, broken formatting that render massive email chains totally unreadable. Often times those massive chains of emails have totally diverged from the initial subject and people on the mail.

jpalomaki 7y ago

Should we get Google Wave back? Not that I remember how it was exactly.. Maybe something that combines Slack and collaborative editing (like Google Docs). It might work if you could just in the middle of the chat switch from discussion to editing a document. This should be somehow integrated experience, happening inside the same tool.

gaogao 7y ago
At my current place, that manifests as just linking to a Google Doc in a chat thread and moving the writing over there.
- jakecopp 7y ago
  Or a Confluence document in my experience.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Yeah; in my experience Confluence is the de-facto architecture repo.

BeetleB 7y ago

>Slack is ok for chatting and quickly sharing stuff, but not for longer, more thoughtful, drawn out, asynchronous discussions. The reality is that in my workplace, it's hard to get longer, more thoughtful, drawn out discussions via email anyway. If I write an email that is more than 2 paragraphs, it very often does not get read. And it almost never gets an equally thoughtful response. I haven't internalized my lesson - I still sometimes write long emails. But 90+% of the times I won't get a response. And when I do, 90+% are going to be 1-2 liners. Don't get me wrong. I like email and simply don't do chat. My work chat tool used to say something to the effect of "If you're in the building I won't respond. Come to me in person or send me an email". I like email so much that I put in significant effort[1] in making my email experience better. Now you've given me an idea for my next project. Autorespond to emails that contain less than 130 characters with "Sorry, I prefer well thought out emails, and your email is too short to warrant my attention." In all seriousness, I probably won't do it - can't think of a way to do it without annoying them. But I do recall an email exchange I had with an old friend, and at one point I sent this email: > Dear old friend, > In 3 emails, you wrote a sum total of 12 words. > For someone as well read as you, please ponder over this. :-) > You were once insistent on preserving the quality of writing - at least in books and novels, and decried the decline that arose with mass paperback fiction. Do you now complain that tweets are too long? (He never responded). [1] http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2018/Sep/solving-my-email-problem/ http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2018/Sep/solving-my-email-proble...

cm2012 7y ago
I'm like you and love long emails. The vast majority of people are more likely to read and respond to short emails though.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

tempguy9999 7y ago

I miss newsgroups.