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Slack’s old formatting syntax was Markdown-like but not exactly Markdown, just similar. In case anyone from Slack is paying attention to their technical users h

Slack’s old formatting syntax was Markdown-like but not exactly Markdown, just similar. In case anyone from Slack is paying attention to their technical users here, this is a great opportunity to move to CommonMark formatting for technical users and wysiwyg for non-technical users: just make this optional and switch the format syntax for the non-wysiwyg mode to CommonMark. I can understand that changing the formatting on people previously would have been disruptive, but that is no longer a viable excuse: you have already disrupted the lives of programmers far worse than changing to CommonMark would have done and switching markup formats won’t affect people who stay in wysiwyg mode at all. If you reintroduce Markdown mode now using CommonMark, programmers will just be happy that they can use Slack effectively again and as a bonus, you’ll match GitHub and everywhere else programmers hang out. Regarding Slack’s attitude about technical users whose life this disrupts, I can see that the calculus may appear to favor the non-technical users: there are probably far more users who have no idea what Markdown is and never need to share code snippets on Slack and who are happy with the new wysiwyg editor since it’s closer to what they get from MS Word and Gmail. However, technical users have massively outsized influence over the choices of technology at most companies. The IT dept is full of technical users who share code fragments all the time. Don’t you think they’ll be keeping an eye out for new chat platforms after this change? Tech startups are (almost by definition) mostly technical users. Do you think any new tech startups will willingly use Slack after this change? Some of those would have been paying customers and a few of them would have become huge paying customers. Now they won’t. I know I’m actively looking for alternatives now and I have controlling influence over what gets used in several paying and non-paying Slack instances.

p1necone 7y ago
Agreed, isn't slack only popular because of "cool" tech startups picking it up initially?
- rbavocadotree 7y ago
  65 of the fortune 100 companies use slack.
  - ajkjk 7y ago
    That seems unrelated to the parent point.
  - networkimprov 7y ago
    But how many of them do so after acquisition of a cool tech startup? :-)
  - thelittleone 7y ago
    I’m always a little wary about these claims. For example I worked at a Fortune 500 before and I created a setup on an app like Slack using my corporate email account. There is a big difference between “used by company Y” and “used by tiny team X inside company Y” (probably without IT approval).
    - sebazzz 7y ago
      True, my team happens to be slack but the company actually employs Teams as a chat solution.
      - client4 7y ago
        I'm sorry for your loss. Teams is truly a horrible experience. "It's like SharePoint for chat" said no happy person ever.
        tapland 7y ago
        We're getting teams which I'm a bit excited for since it is going to be a company wide replacement for Lync/Skype for business and no developer here has ever used Slack, IRC or anything like this.
        black_puppydog 7y ago
        gosh I hope they pay you well...
nitrogen 7y ago
If you reintroduce Markdown mode now using CommonMark, programmers will just be happy that they can use Slack effectively again and as a bonus, you’ll match GitHub and everywhere else programmers hang out. Please please do, Slack. I filed a support request already asking how to turn off the new editor. While we're at it, let's have syntax highlighting of inline non-snippet code blocks.
hobofan 7y ago
That's exactly what Reddit recently added, when they wanted to become more newcomer-friendly, and I have to say that it works pretty well!
pgt 7y ago
Never put your customers back in a buying position! Learned this from @dhh. Especially when the minority rule applies to them.
thundergolfer 7y ago
I made a small CLI tool I use at work specifically because their formatting is almost-but-not-quite-Markdown. Just stick to CommonMark, for god's sake. Atlassian, Slack, take a look at Github's editor experience because it's fantastic compared to yours.
- antihero 7y ago
  I wish we could do GitHub style syntax highlighting. Is that part of commonmark?
ako 7y ago
Slack probably has statistics which indicate that by now their largest user group is non-techies. And i'm assuming that if you look at paying customers, the amount of non-technies is probably even larger. People who are probably not even aware of this thing called markdown. So if you need to increase revenue replacing markdown with wysiwyg will make sense to UX and product management.
- nizmow 7y ago
  Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread. Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.
  - ako 7y ago
    Yes, and most of us would do the same thing running a product, if it means more profits. Optimizing for Shareholder value...
    - brazzledazzle 7y ago
      I'd do it for a boatload of cash but not any less. Your core tech users are still selling your product for you, free of charge. Unless it's abuse/fraud/security mitigation there's usually a way to keep your technical customers happy along with your new user base. It obviously has a cost but if you're making dramatic changes that alienate your early adopters I'm sure that those changes are going to do some needle moving in terms of increasing your profits. No one would do something like that on a whim... That cost does need to stay within reason though. And something crazy like maintaining divergent architectures/infrastructure isn't really reasonable either. But on the bright side the technical folks might be understanding of these sorts of tradeoffs.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      What happened to self-respect and the desire to provide a quality profit that makes people's life better?
Cort3z 7y ago
I am in a similar position. It is almost always the technical people in a company that sets this stuff up, thus you are losing the goodwill of the decision-makers, which is unfortunate.

p1necone 7y ago

Agreed, isn't slack only popular because of "cool" tech startups picking it up initially?

rbavocadotree 7y ago
65 of the fortune 100 companies use slack.
- ajkjk 7y ago
  That seems unrelated to the parent point.
- networkimprov 7y ago
  But how many of them do so after acquisition of a cool tech startup? :-)
- thelittleone 7y ago
  I’m always a little wary about these claims. For example I worked at a Fortune 500 before and I created a setup on an app like Slack using my corporate email account. There is a big difference between “used by company Y” and “used by tiny team X inside company Y” (probably without IT approval).
  - sebazzz 7y ago
    True, my team happens to be slack but the company actually employs Teams as a chat solution.
    - client4 7y ago
      I'm sorry for your loss. Teams is truly a horrible experience. "It's like SharePoint for chat" said no happy person ever.
      - tapland 7y ago
        We're getting teams which I'm a bit excited for since it is going to be a company wide replacement for Lync/Skype for business and no developer here has ever used Slack, IRC or anything like this.
        black_puppydog 7y ago
        gosh I hope they pay you well...

nitrogen 7y ago

If you reintroduce Markdown mode now using CommonMark, programmers will just be happy that they can use Slack effectively again and as a bonus, you’ll match GitHub and everywhere else programmers hang out. Please please do, Slack. I filed a support request already asking how to turn off the new editor. While we're at it, let's have syntax highlighting of inline non-snippet code blocks.

hobofan 7y ago

That's exactly what Reddit recently added, when they wanted to become more newcomer-friendly, and I have to say that it works pretty well!

pgt 7y ago

Never put your customers back in a buying position! Learned this from @dhh. Especially when the minority rule applies to them.

thundergolfer 7y ago

I made a small CLI tool I use at work specifically because their formatting is almost-but-not-quite-Markdown. Just stick to CommonMark, for god's sake. Atlassian, Slack, take a look at Github's editor experience because it's fantastic compared to yours.

antihero 7y ago
I wish we could do GitHub style syntax highlighting. Is that part of commonmark?

ako 7y ago

Slack probably has statistics which indicate that by now their largest user group is non-techies. And i'm assuming that if you look at paying customers, the amount of non-technies is probably even larger. People who are probably not even aware of this thing called markdown. So if you need to increase revenue replacing markdown with wysiwyg will make sense to UX and product management.

nizmow 7y ago
Sadly I think this is just another case of product adoption largely being driven by techies in the early stages because they loved it, and later in its growth stages realising their market is now way more mainstream and designing their features as such. And now we're alienated by the same product we helped spread. Twitter is another obvious example I can think of.
- ako 7y ago
  Yes, and most of us would do the same thing running a product, if it means more profits. Optimizing for Shareholder value...
  - brazzledazzle 7y ago
    I'd do it for a boatload of cash but not any less. Your core tech users are still selling your product for you, free of charge. Unless it's abuse/fraud/security mitigation there's usually a way to keep your technical customers happy along with your new user base. It obviously has a cost but if you're making dramatic changes that alienate your early adopters I'm sure that those changes are going to do some needle moving in terms of increasing your profits. No one would do something like that on a whim... That cost does need to stay within reason though. And something crazy like maintaining divergent architectures/infrastructure isn't really reasonable either. But on the bright side the technical folks might be understanding of these sorts of tradeoffs.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    What happened to self-respect and the desire to provide a quality profit that makes people's life better?

Cort3z 7y ago

I am in a similar position. It is almost always the technical people in a company that sets this stuff up, thus you are losing the goodwill of the decision-makers, which is unfortunate.