4 ms·

I detest Slack and their push for chat ops. Good riddance. Nothing wrong with IRC.

ebiester 6y ago
So, how do search every public channel, regardless of whether you were even a part of the company at the time, with as convenient of a workflow as Slack has? There's nothing wrong with IRC if you are trying to solve the problems of IRC. They don't solve the business problem as well as slack does. Slack is Slack because of search and an easy to use client with a universal extension set.
- dijit 6y ago
  If you want publicly accessible histories I can think of a few better ways. The (very) old school way was to have indexed logs accessible over HTTP. You can almost certainly still find IRC logs on google this way -- If it’s internal just stick an ELK stack behind an authentication proxy it’s 20 minutes of work, an hour most with the addition of a log bot which joins public channels. This is for IRC though, better options exist for things like Zulip or Matrix. (non-exhaustive list, obviously) Side note though: I find it weird that this is the bar. It comes up every thread but it’s tantamount to a “ha! Gotcha!”, because no -sane- messaging system logs its history in a way that is retrievable immediately because indexing -all that content- is expensive and better off being centralised; additionally chat history (almost by definition) loses relevance quickly. It’s almost certainly an anti-pattern when you feel the need to refer to things you said 2 years ago, immediately, in the same client you used to write those things. I don’t know how you’re using slack though, so I guess it’s pretty central to your flow. EDIT: am I wrong? Is this normal? Someone correct me please if you’re not happy with what I say.
  - yesbabyyes 6y ago
    Some organizations have basically regressed to "we don't have an intranet/wiki, we have slack" and there you are, HR have uploaded every important policy somewhere and it's now your job to get down in the basement and locate the store room with a door saying beware of tiger. Every day. Is there something important being said that you should probably know about? Sure. Somewhere! No need for organization, distribution lists, or any such quaint concepts, it's all there in slack, somewhere.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- war1025 6y ago
  People always mention Slack's search as if it's a great selling point. Any time I use it, it seems adequate but nothing really to write home about.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Which I think says more about their competitors search offerings than something revolutionary about Slack. “Functional enough to be useful” is a bar that a lot of products can’t seem to meet.
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    Slack logs are a liability. It’s absolutely not a feature to me. It solved a problem they created: claiming working synchronously is better than asynchronously and pushing people away from things like wikis and email.
- lastofthemojito 6y ago
  There's always Mattermost. It'd be funny to see Pega or some other Salesforce competitor fund Mattermost development to try to make Saleforce's acquisition of Slack less valuable.
- tw04 6y ago
  The groundwork is there, I don't know that anyone has written a client to implement it in a single gui. Today you'd dump the logs into a central repo (splunk/database/whatever) - likely pushed by a bot in the channels you want to log but there are also IRCd servers that will do logging - and users would search logs there while chatting in the main client. I'd imagine someone could write an extension to Hexchat to integrate it directly into the client. https://hexchat.github.io/ https://hexchat.github.io/
- bbarnett 6y ago
  I get that people want this, I just don't get why. After 20 years of work as a sysadmin/coder/DBA, I've never even remotely wanted this. Documentation is the key. Wikis. Code comments. Bug/issue trackers. I've never considered walking up to someone's desk, and talking to them, as something I need documented, and searchable. And that's what slack/irc/IM/etc is to me. Walking up, and talking to someone at a desk. Not to mention, if you want any REAL functionality with Slack, you have to pay. And you thereby outsource all backups, and additionally loads of confidential conversations to an external company. Which then cuts you off if you cancel your account! Most of the people I know who use Slack, use it "because that's why SV uses".
  - Turbots 6y ago
    There you have it. You're a sysadmin. Indeed you never need help from anyone, you're happy to work the same way for 10 years and not change a damn thing.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > Documentation is the key. Wikis. Code comments. Bug/issue trackers. That requires people to write them and unless there's a strong managerial hand poking constantly, it's often "there's no time right now, we'll do it tomorrow" and, as we know, tomorrow never comes.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      You're certainly describing failed managerial methods. And employees who aren't very good at their job. Yet Slack isn't really the answer. Frankly, Slack is inept management's attempt to fix their own, and employee's, shortcomings. Having a new on-board use some search function on Slack, to look through 100s of hours of conversation for "random important things", isn't going to fix that. Nor will people sifting through that junk, help when some bonehead didn't backup, or document key vital parts of a config. Or code. If it's important, it needs to be documented. Not be stuck in a deluge of endless blather, random docs, zero real version control, the list goes on. Ah well.
- u801e 6y ago
  > So, how do search every public channel, regardless of whether you were even a part of the company at the time, with as convenient of a workflow as Slack has? How likely is that scenario? Chat is far less organized compared to email or forums and it's difficult to find the result you're looking for unless you've seen it and have a vague memory of what it was and when it was posted. When I try to use Slack's search feature, I typically get a bunch of irrelevant results. In fact, I've had better luck scrolling back and finding the message I'm looking for.

So, how do search every public channel, regardless of whether you were even a part of the company at the time, with as convenient of a workflow as Slack has? There's nothing wrong with IRC if you are trying to solve the problems of IRC. They don't solve the business problem as well as slack does. Slack is Slack because of search and an easy to use client with a universal extension set.

dijit 6y ago
If you want publicly accessible histories I can think of a few better ways. The (very) old school way was to have indexed logs accessible over HTTP. You can almost certainly still find IRC logs on google this way -- If it’s internal just stick an ELK stack behind an authentication proxy it’s 20 minutes of work, an hour most with the addition of a log bot which joins public channels. This is for IRC though, better options exist for things like Zulip or Matrix. (non-exhaustive list, obviously) Side note though: I find it weird that this is the bar. It comes up every thread but it’s tantamount to a “ha! Gotcha!”, because no -sane- messaging system logs its history in a way that is retrievable immediately because indexing -all that content- is expensive and better off being centralised; additionally chat history (almost by definition) loses relevance quickly. It’s almost certainly an anti-pattern when you feel the need to refer to things you said 2 years ago, immediately, in the same client you used to write those things. I don’t know how you’re using slack though, so I guess it’s pretty central to your flow. EDIT: am I wrong? Is this normal? Someone correct me please if you’re not happy with what I say.
- yesbabyyes 6y ago
  Some organizations have basically regressed to "we don't have an intranet/wiki, we have slack" and there you are, HR have uploaded every important policy somewhere and it's now your job to get down in the basement and locate the store room with a door saying beware of tiger. Every day. Is there something important being said that you should probably know about? Sure. Somewhere! No need for organization, distribution lists, or any such quaint concepts, it's all there in slack, somewhere.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
war1025 6y ago
People always mention Slack's search as if it's a great selling point. Any time I use it, it seems adequate but nothing really to write home about.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Which I think says more about their competitors search offerings than something revolutionary about Slack. “Functional enough to be useful” is a bar that a lot of products can’t seem to meet.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Slack logs are a liability. It’s absolutely not a feature to me. It solved a problem they created: claiming working synchronously is better than asynchronously and pushing people away from things like wikis and email.
lastofthemojito 6y ago
There's always Mattermost. It'd be funny to see Pega or some other Salesforce competitor fund Mattermost development to try to make Saleforce's acquisition of Slack less valuable.
tw04 6y ago
The groundwork is there, I don't know that anyone has written a client to implement it in a single gui. Today you'd dump the logs into a central repo (splunk/database/whatever) - likely pushed by a bot in the channels you want to log but there are also IRCd servers that will do logging - and users would search logs there while chatting in the main client. I'd imagine someone could write an extension to Hexchat to integrate it directly into the client. https://hexchat.github.io/ https://hexchat.github.io/
bbarnett 6y ago
I get that people want this, I just don't get why. After 20 years of work as a sysadmin/coder/DBA, I've never even remotely wanted this. Documentation is the key. Wikis. Code comments. Bug/issue trackers. I've never considered walking up to someone's desk, and talking to them, as something I need documented, and searchable. And that's what slack/irc/IM/etc is to me. Walking up, and talking to someone at a desk. Not to mention, if you want any REAL functionality with Slack, you have to pay. And you thereby outsource all backups, and additionally loads of confidential conversations to an external company. Which then cuts you off if you cancel your account! Most of the people I know who use Slack, use it "because that's why SV uses".
- Turbots 6y ago
  There you have it. You're a sysadmin. Indeed you never need help from anyone, you're happy to work the same way for 10 years and not change a damn thing.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > Documentation is the key. Wikis. Code comments. Bug/issue trackers. That requires people to write them and unless there's a strong managerial hand poking constantly, it's often "there's no time right now, we'll do it tomorrow" and, as we know, tomorrow never comes.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    You're certainly describing failed managerial methods. And employees who aren't very good at their job. Yet Slack isn't really the answer. Frankly, Slack is inept management's attempt to fix their own, and employee's, shortcomings. Having a new on-board use some search function on Slack, to look through 100s of hours of conversation for "random important things", isn't going to fix that. Nor will people sifting through that junk, help when some bonehead didn't backup, or document key vital parts of a config. Or code. If it's important, it needs to be documented. Not be stuck in a deluge of endless blather, random docs, zero real version control, the list goes on. Ah well.
u801e 6y ago
> So, how do search every public channel, regardless of whether you were even a part of the company at the time, with as convenient of a workflow as Slack has? How likely is that scenario? Chat is far less organized compared to email or forums and it's difficult to find the result you're looking for unless you've seen it and have a vague memory of what it was and when it was posted. When I try to use Slack's search feature, I typically get a bunch of irrelevant results. In fact, I've had better luck scrolling back and finding the message I'm looking for.