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"I apologize for the disruption to your existing workflows. Our aim is to build an editor that works for all Slack users to better format their messages and cle

by mdszy 7y ago

"I apologize for the disruption to your existing workflows. Our aim is to build an editor that works for all Slack users to better format their messages and clearly communicate in channels, regardless of their technical expertise. While we are taking all feedback on board, disabling the new formatting tool isn't an option that we will be offering."

geoffreyhale 7y ago
Source?
- ajkjk 7y ago
  Sounds very similar to the infuriating twitter replies when this feature came out.
- sm4rk0 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592828
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Well, I'm quite happy they had to shamefully walk that statement back - seems like it might have been a feature pushed arbitrarily by a C-level fiat rather than user research. Having the WYSIWYG thing as an option is nice - forcing everyone into it less so.
gropius 7y ago
> regardless of their technical expertise Good luck with that. Trying to make one product powerful enough for the techies yet simple enough for the normies is the software equivalent of Napoleon attacking Russia.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  ... In the winter.
ajnin 7y ago
> an editor that works for all Slack users That's a common pitfall many companies, including Google, seem to be falling into. Everyone uses tools a bit differently. Imagine that each feature is an axis in the space of all the ways to use the tool. Every person will be a different point somewhere in that space. If you try to enforce only one way to use the feature, you carve a slice in the useful space of your tool. And the more features you have, the smaller is the space defined by the intersection of all those "works for all" features, and the fewer users it actually helps ! The "one tool that works for everyone" simply does not exist. Thankfully they realized that this time, but it's more often not the case.

by mdszy 7y ago

geoffreyhale 7y ago

Source?

ajkjk 7y ago
Sounds very similar to the infuriating twitter replies when this feature came out.
sm4rk0 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592828
- munk-a 7y ago
  Well, I'm quite happy they had to shamefully walk that statement back - seems like it might have been a feature pushed arbitrarily by a C-level fiat rather than user research. Having the WYSIWYG thing as an option is nice - forcing everyone into it less so.

gropius 7y ago

> regardless of their technical expertise Good luck with that. Trying to make one product powerful enough for the techies yet simple enough for the normies is the software equivalent of Napoleon attacking Russia.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
... In the winter.

ajnin 7y ago

> an editor that works for all Slack users That's a common pitfall many companies, including Google, seem to be falling into. Everyone uses tools a bit differently. Imagine that each feature is an axis in the space of all the ways to use the tool. Every person will be a different point somewhere in that space. If you try to enforce only one way to use the feature, you carve a slice in the useful space of your tool. And the more features you have, the smaller is the space defined by the intersection of all those "works for all" features, and the fewer users it actually helps ! The "one tool that works for everyone" simply does not exist. Thankfully they realized that this time, but it's more often not the case.