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> Nope. That’s not an issue with Slack. It’s your interpretation of what a message or DM is. There’s no timer attached to a DM. This urgency is self-inflicted.

> Nope. That’s not an issue with Slack. It’s your interpretation of what a message or DM is. There’s no timer attached to a DM. This urgency is self-inflicted. Yes there is. If there is no urgency then it's no better than an email in a worse, less-searchable UI. Direct chat has been, since it's invention, a synchronous action. That is how people use it. > The problem isn’t Slack. Its never Slack. It’s the lack of discipline of people using it. Email does not require discipline to use properly.

jnwatson 7y ago
Email does indeed require discipline. Poorly phrased messages, inconsistent quoting, too many recipients are all bad. Checking email too often is a productivity killing habit. However, the worst, most common, problem with email is disorganization. It takes a great deal of effort to organize received emails so they are appropriately handled. I do not miss the days where I’d spend an hour every weekend filing my inbox.
- lanstin 7y ago
  Not to mention the people that never read the whole message if it is more than two sentences. I can’t count how often I have seen some ‘urgent production’ issue email thread with like fifty people and fifty emails and the stupid answer was in the logs in the very first email all along.
halbritt 7y ago
It's way better than an email in the sense that most of the discourse on slack is human authored whereas most of the email that lands in my box isn't. I care about human interaction and slack facilitates that nicely.
manicdee 7y ago
DM is a request for urgent attention, the social contract per team or per individual might be “respond to DMs immediately” but there’s no need to actually respond with the answer whatever question was asked. As an example: my teams know that I check email twice a day (once on arriving, once in late afternoon), but I will respond to DMs about every half hour or so (Pomodoro time). There’s no promise of immediate response, because I have stuff I am actually doing.

jnwatson 7y ago

Email does indeed require discipline. Poorly phrased messages, inconsistent quoting, too many recipients are all bad. Checking email too often is a productivity killing habit. However, the worst, most common, problem with email is disorganization. It takes a great deal of effort to organize received emails so they are appropriately handled. I do not miss the days where I’d spend an hour every weekend filing my inbox.

lanstin 7y ago
Not to mention the people that never read the whole message if it is more than two sentences. I can’t count how often I have seen some ‘urgent production’ issue email thread with like fifty people and fifty emails and the stupid answer was in the logs in the very first email all along.

halbritt 7y ago

It's way better than an email in the sense that most of the discourse on slack is human authored whereas most of the email that lands in my box isn't. I care about human interaction and slack facilitates that nicely.

manicdee 7y ago

DM is a request for urgent attention, the social contract per team or per individual might be “respond to DMs immediately” but there’s no need to actually respond with the answer whatever question was asked. As an example: my teams know that I check email twice a day (once on arriving, once in late afternoon), but I will respond to DMs about every half hour or so (Pomodoro time). There’s no promise of immediate response, because I have stuff I am actually doing.