7 ms·

> Customers may have trouble connecting or using Slack I can't stand how marketing speak pervades every sphere of the world. Their entire system is offline (i

> Customers may have trouble connecting or using Slack I can't stand how marketing speak pervades every sphere of the world. Their entire system is offline (inconvenient certainly, but it happens) and they can't bring themselves to say "Slack is down. We're working on it and will be back ASAP." or something similar. Instead we may have trouble.

jeffbee 6y ago
How do you know it's down completely? Maybe it's down for you and maybe even down for a majority but still up for some subset. Happens with many products.
- ARandomerDude 6y ago
  https://status.slack.com/ https://status.slack.com/ Every service is marked as "Outage" as of now (also when I wrote the comment).
  - gog 6y ago
    The outage is not for everybody, I can connect.
    - politician 6y ago
      Thundering herd. If you can avoid it, don't connect.
  - jonwachob91 6y ago
    It's been a rollercoaster for me the last few hours, sometimes servers are up sometimes they are down. Point being, they are intermittently up :/
  - ellisv 6y ago
    yet also "Uptime for the current quarter: 100%"
    - delecti 6y ago
      Maybe that's just for the outage tracker. It's up.
    - jf22 6y ago
      I don't see this as a big deal. Not all metrics have to be real time.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't know, because the Slack status page is so vague.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
remyp 6y ago
I'm willing to bet this is influenced more by SLAs and Slack's lawyers than marketing speak.
- tvorm 6y ago
  As someone in marketing, it's a little bit of this, and a little bit of determining what the most default, catch-all statement could be well ahead of time to make "crisis comms" that much smoother.
Fauntleroy 6y ago
Probably just some technicality to try and escape litigation wrt SLAs for their bit corporate contracts.
unreal37 6y ago
It's not down for me...
rflrob 6y ago
I'm still logged in on mobile and can communicate with people from my team, but cannot log in from desktop. With so few people able to connect, it's also unclear whether Slack is eating my messages or there's just no one to respond. So I'd certainly rank that as "trouble using slack" rather than "the system is completely down".
tshaddox 6y ago
Why do you consider that to be "marketing speak?" It appears to be concise, direct, and accurate. The phrase "Slack is down," even if true by some interpretations (it hasn't been "completely down" from what I have seen), is imprecise and informal.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- danepowell 6y ago
  There's a wide gulf between "some customers may have trouble using Slack" and "most/all customers are completely unable to use Slack". Putting aside formality, I'd say "Slack is down" is in fact more accurate here (assuming that it is true that most users can't use it, which is true for our company at least).
- ChrisRR 6y ago
  Because it's not that you "may" have trouble If their service is down, you will have trouble. The service will be absolutely inaccessible. Don't give people hope with "may"
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    But 1) it has apparently not been the case that the service was "absolutely inaccessible" and 2) "Slack is down" is still very imprecise and not a great alternative even if the service had been "absolutely inaccessible."
- ekianjo 6y ago
  It was pretty clear the 'may' is a euphemism when your whole system is down.
- Lammy 6y ago
  To me it's mildly irksome in the same way as people who say "may or may not". Like, yes, those are the two possibilities, thank you.
elbrian 6y ago
Very strange to be so upset by an accurate and concise statement, while offering an alternative that isn't even factually true.
cozzyd 6y ago
I did manage to receive a message a few minutes ago, so it might be just mostly dead.
- NyxWulf 6y ago
  If it's all dead, there is only one thing you can do.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
"We're experiencing increased service degradation" is so 201x-ish
- ourcat 6y ago
  "Something's not quite right" Another classic.
  - kaszanka 6y ago
    "Oopsie woopsie!"
  - wpm 6y ago
    "Shit's fucked yo, send whiskey"
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  I find it hilarious that the status page is still saying the uptime for the current quarter is 100%. I'd think it'd have lost at least one 9 by any obvious definition of "current quarter".
  - jf22 6y ago
    Maybe it's not updated in real time? I wouldn't publish my teams uptime metrics while a crisis was happening...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
briffle 6y ago
I agree with you in principal, but I have had no problem connecting to Slack today (I have a free one I use with friends, not a business account) so to say they are down would also be inaccurate.
mepiethree 6y ago
The funniest part to me is that their status page still says "Uptime for the current quarter: 100%". These uptime messages are so BS. Heroku reports 6 9s of uptime for this month, even though their own status page shows multiple days with incidents >6 hours
- grecy 6y ago
  Someones performance bonus depends on it, you can bet there is going to be A LOT of heel dragging when it comes to updating those statuses!
- pluc 6y ago
  Well that's what happens when Legal joins the fun and starts defining what "downtime" means
- Havoc 6y ago
  Yeah the amount of airgapped uptime dashboard in SV currently is insane. Even the major clouds...hn is going wild about it yet the dashboard says all good.
x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
It's not down completely as I'm chatting with my coworkers on it now.
war1025 6y ago
For the record, I am logged in and have exchanged messages with at least one other person. The rest of my team does seem to be unable to get in though. Maybe it's because I have just had the Slack tab left open in my browser since before I left for Christmas?
the_duke 6y ago
Well, most outages start with issues that increasingly get worse. That apparently was also the case here. I started having smaller connectivity issues before it went down completely.
anon34234 6y ago
This is probably for legal reasons, i.e. Service Level Agreements. "May" leaves the door open to other interpretations and reporting from other systems.
MildlySerious 6y ago
The status page might just lack a branch for when everything is down entirely and only differentiates between "all green" and "not all green". I assume this doesn't happen all that often.
res0nat0r 6y ago
It's not entirely offline though. I was connected via my phone ~90 minutes ago when I first got online today and never had any issues and was able to tell folks at work my PC connectivity may be spotty for a while. When I signed in via my Mac laptop I wasn't able to connect for about 20 minutes, and was redirected to the status page. I've been online for about an hour now.
Reebz 6y ago
Not marketing. That type of language comes from legal and the “never proactively admit fault“ mantra
ak217 6y ago
It never went down for me.

jeffbee 6y ago

How do you know it's down completely? Maybe it's down for you and maybe even down for a majority but still up for some subset. Happens with many products.

ARandomerDude 6y ago
https://status.slack.com/ https://status.slack.com/ Every service is marked as "Outage" as of now (also when I wrote the comment).
- gog 6y ago
  The outage is not for everybody, I can connect.
  - politician 6y ago
    Thundering herd. If you can avoid it, don't connect.
- jonwachob91 6y ago
  It's been a rollercoaster for me the last few hours, sometimes servers are up sometimes they are down. Point being, they are intermittently up :/
- ellisv 6y ago
  yet also "Uptime for the current quarter: 100%"
  - delecti 6y ago
    Maybe that's just for the outage tracker. It's up.
  - jf22 6y ago
    I don't see this as a big deal. Not all metrics have to be real time.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Yeah, I don't know, because the Slack status page is so vague.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

remyp 6y ago

I'm willing to bet this is influenced more by SLAs and Slack's lawyers than marketing speak.

tvorm 6y ago
As someone in marketing, it's a little bit of this, and a little bit of determining what the most default, catch-all statement could be well ahead of time to make "crisis comms" that much smoother.

Fauntleroy 6y ago

Probably just some technicality to try and escape litigation wrt SLAs for their bit corporate contracts.

unreal37 6y ago

It's not down for me...

rflrob 6y ago

I'm still logged in on mobile and can communicate with people from my team, but cannot log in from desktop. With so few people able to connect, it's also unclear whether Slack is eating my messages or there's just no one to respond. So I'd certainly rank that as "trouble using slack" rather than "the system is completely down".

tshaddox 6y ago

Why do you consider that to be "marketing speak?" It appears to be concise, direct, and accurate. The phrase "Slack is down," even if true by some interpretations (it hasn't been "completely down" from what I have seen), is imprecise and informal.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
danepowell 6y ago
There's a wide gulf between "some customers may have trouble using Slack" and "most/all customers are completely unable to use Slack". Putting aside formality, I'd say "Slack is down" is in fact more accurate here (assuming that it is true that most users can't use it, which is true for our company at least).
ChrisRR 6y ago
Because it's not that you "may" have trouble If their service is down, you will have trouble. The service will be absolutely inaccessible. Don't give people hope with "may"
- tshaddox 6y ago
  But 1) it has apparently not been the case that the service was "absolutely inaccessible" and 2) "Slack is down" is still very imprecise and not a great alternative even if the service had been "absolutely inaccessible."
ekianjo 6y ago
It was pretty clear the 'may' is a euphemism when your whole system is down.
Lammy 6y ago
To me it's mildly irksome in the same way as people who say "may or may not". Like, yes, those are the two possibilities, thank you.

elbrian 6y ago

Very strange to be so upset by an accurate and concise statement, while offering an alternative that isn't even factually true.

cozzyd 6y ago

I did manage to receive a message a few minutes ago, so it might be just mostly dead.

NyxWulf 6y ago
If it's all dead, there is only one thing you can do.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

"We're experiencing increased service degradation" is so 201x-ish

ourcat 6y ago
"Something's not quite right" Another classic.
- kaszanka 6y ago
  "Oopsie woopsie!"
- wpm 6y ago
  "Shit's fucked yo, send whiskey"
AlotOfReading 6y ago
I find it hilarious that the status page is still saying the uptime for the current quarter is 100%. I'd think it'd have lost at least one 9 by any obvious definition of "current quarter".
- jf22 6y ago
  Maybe it's not updated in real time? I wouldn't publish my teams uptime metrics while a crisis was happening...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

briffle 6y ago

I agree with you in principal, but I have had no problem connecting to Slack today (I have a free one I use with friends, not a business account) so to say they are down would also be inaccurate.

mepiethree 6y ago

The funniest part to me is that their status page still says "Uptime for the current quarter: 100%". These uptime messages are so BS. Heroku reports 6 9s of uptime for this month, even though their own status page shows multiple days with incidents >6 hours

grecy 6y ago
Someones performance bonus depends on it, you can bet there is going to be A LOT of heel dragging when it comes to updating those statuses!
pluc 6y ago
Well that's what happens when Legal joins the fun and starts defining what "downtime" means
Havoc 6y ago
Yeah the amount of airgapped uptime dashboard in SV currently is insane. Even the major clouds...hn is going wild about it yet the dashboard says all good.

x3n0ph3n3 6y ago

It's not down completely as I'm chatting with my coworkers on it now.

war1025 6y ago

For the record, I am logged in and have exchanged messages with at least one other person. The rest of my team does seem to be unable to get in though. Maybe it's because I have just had the Slack tab left open in my browser since before I left for Christmas?

the_duke 6y ago

Well, most outages start with issues that increasingly get worse. That apparently was also the case here. I started having smaller connectivity issues before it went down completely.

anon34234 6y ago

This is probably for legal reasons, i.e. Service Level Agreements. "May" leaves the door open to other interpretations and reporting from other systems.

MildlySerious 6y ago

The status page might just lack a branch for when everything is down entirely and only differentiates between "all green" and "not all green". I assume this doesn't happen all that often.

res0nat0r 6y ago

It's not entirely offline though. I was connected via my phone ~90 minutes ago when I first got online today and never had any issues and was able to tell folks at work my PC connectivity may be spotty for a while. When I signed in via my Mac laptop I wasn't able to connect for about 20 minutes, and was redirected to the status page. I've been online for about an hour now.

Reebz 6y ago

Not marketing. That type of language comes from legal and the “never proactively admit fault“ mantra

ak217 6y ago

It never went down for me.