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I have no idea what makes people use Slack. We demoed it at our company, and most people hated it. I guess it's one of those things people start using when ther

I have no idea what makes people use Slack. We demoed it at our company, and most people hated it. I guess it's one of those things people start using when there's a handful of employees and then they just get stuck with it. The worst feature about Slack is its "threads" feature. You're effectively manically thread chasing or you just have to learn to not care about past conversations. The other annoying thing was input lag when typing sometimes. It was completely unpredictable when it happens (wasn't pc load, browser wasn't that busy, but i didn't check the profiler; internet was fine). It would come and go on its own. Not everyone had it either, and it seemed to be isolated to Linux machines. We demoed Zulip, but some people didn't like that one because the UI is... It looks like brutalist design applied to UI. Most of us were ok with it even if it's a bit "ugly" (it's not ugly, but I'd call it an acquired taste). Quill was supposed to fill this gap for us, but the CTO said that the $15/user/month price is too steep. Lol. We settled for the mediocre of both worlds: Mattermost. It's not great, but it's not shit either. You can't scroll in it (well you can, but you don't want to because it's buggy) and the search is crappy, bite you can usually find what you're looki for after a few tries.

Veen 5y ago
It's crap but it's better than email for remote team communication. And once you're in it's a pain in the arse to change to a different service, so people don't.
kstrauser 5y ago
Odd. We generally love Slack. I think you have to use it a little while for everyone to adopt sane norms for it, though. Among them is being quick to join and leave channels. A sales person has a question for me? They summon me to their channel where we chat for a bit. All done? I leave it so that I don’t see the rest of their chats. By now, if I see a conversation at all, there’s a 90% chance it’s relevant to me. Not saying that it’s the best possible solution, just that we’ve been pretty happy with it for the last several years.
- spoiler 5y ago
  The leaving and joining channels is an interesting idea. I guess that kinda simulates Zulip's topics/threads feature to a degree. I guess that wouldn't have been too horrendous to do. I kinda do this with Mattermost, but I always feel awkward just leaving, so I leave after a few days usually lol. Aside: I love the threads/topics implementation in Discord. However, a lot of people don't want to use Discord for work (I'd probably make a separate account myself; I don't like job stuff seeping into my play time).
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    Yeah, that’s the “norms” part. After a while you get a feel for how long you need to stick around after you’re no longer part of the conversation. All that said, I love how Mattermost is coming along. Open source + on prem is a huge win in a lot of settings. For instance, I don’t think you could use Slack at all for HIPAA-covered talk. Last I looked you couldn’t sign a business associate agreement with them. You could use a properly secured internal service for that, though. For example, I know medical offices using Synology Chat for inside conversations like “we need to reschedule Joe Smith’s appointment”.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      You’d need the enterprise tier for HIPAA compliance: https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/360020685594-Slack-and-HIPAA https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/360020685594-Slac...
Spivak 5y ago
Mattermost and Slack are at least in the same class. Slack proved their market by being light-years ahead of Outlook, and Lynq. They took "the nerds who love their little private IRC server" to the masses.
chias 5y ago
We use Slack. We "like" it in that it is an enormous improvement over what we used before: hipchat.
wpietri 5y ago
I have used Slack at a few companies and it has worked fine for us. No reason it should work for you as well, of course; everybody's different. FWIW, the thread-chasing thing is not a problem for me because toward the top there's a sidebar element that says "Threads" that lights up when there are new comments in threads. I've used it only on Linux and haven't experienced input lag. Not sure what the story is there.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  That Threads element only lights up if a thread you've participated in (or have been mentioned in) has activity. If you work in an org that uses threads and you go on vacation for a day or two, you're going to have to spend your first morning back looking for threads to read. You can't know how far back to scroll back either because someone could have replied to a month's old thread. Threading should not have been added, IMO, without a way to optionally show all thread comments in a single view as they are delivered, as though they were regular chat messages (with a thread annotation).
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Huh. We use threads. I've taken time off. I felt no obligation to go back and read every possible thread. Why would your coworkers expect anybody not in the thread to see sudden participation in a month-old thread? Mine sure don't.
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      Probably expectations associated with threads in all other platforms, like email and message boards going back decades.

Veen 5y ago

It's crap but it's better than email for remote team communication. And once you're in it's a pain in the arse to change to a different service, so people don't.

kstrauser 5y ago

Odd. We generally love Slack. I think you have to use it a little while for everyone to adopt sane norms for it, though. Among them is being quick to join and leave channels. A sales person has a question for me? They summon me to their channel where we chat for a bit. All done? I leave it so that I don’t see the rest of their chats. By now, if I see a conversation at all, there’s a 90% chance it’s relevant to me. Not saying that it’s the best possible solution, just that we’ve been pretty happy with it for the last several years.

spoiler 5y ago
The leaving and joining channels is an interesting idea. I guess that kinda simulates Zulip's topics/threads feature to a degree. I guess that wouldn't have been too horrendous to do. I kinda do this with Mattermost, but I always feel awkward just leaving, so I leave after a few days usually lol. Aside: I love the threads/topics implementation in Discord. However, a lot of people don't want to use Discord for work (I'd probably make a separate account myself; I don't like job stuff seeping into my play time).
- kstrauser 5y ago
  Yeah, that’s the “norms” part. After a while you get a feel for how long you need to stick around after you’re no longer part of the conversation. All that said, I love how Mattermost is coming along. Open source + on prem is a huge win in a lot of settings. For instance, I don’t think you could use Slack at all for HIPAA-covered talk. Last I looked you couldn’t sign a business associate agreement with them. You could use a properly secured internal service for that, though. For example, I know medical offices using Synology Chat for inside conversations like “we need to reschedule Joe Smith’s appointment”.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    You’d need the enterprise tier for HIPAA compliance: https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/360020685594-Slack-and-HIPAA https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/360020685594-Slac...

Spivak 5y ago

Mattermost and Slack are at least in the same class. Slack proved their market by being light-years ahead of Outlook, and Lynq. They took "the nerds who love their little private IRC server" to the masses.

chias 5y ago

We use Slack. We "like" it in that it is an enormous improvement over what we used before: hipchat.

wpietri 5y ago

I have used Slack at a few companies and it has worked fine for us. No reason it should work for you as well, of course; everybody's different. FWIW, the thread-chasing thing is not a problem for me because toward the top there's a sidebar element that says "Threads" that lights up when there are new comments in threads. I've used it only on Linux and haven't experienced input lag. Not sure what the story is there.

notreallyserio 5y ago
That Threads element only lights up if a thread you've participated in (or have been mentioned in) has activity. If you work in an org that uses threads and you go on vacation for a day or two, you're going to have to spend your first morning back looking for threads to read. You can't know how far back to scroll back either because someone could have replied to a month's old thread. Threading should not have been added, IMO, without a way to optionally show all thread comments in a single view as they are delivered, as though they were regular chat messages (with a thread annotation).
- wpietri 5y ago
  Huh. We use threads. I've taken time off. I felt no obligation to go back and read every possible thread. Why would your coworkers expect anybody not in the thread to see sudden participation in a month-old thread? Mine sure don't.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    Probably expectations associated with threads in all other platforms, like email and message boards going back decades.