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Nothing important should be singularly stored in a chat app. If it matters, store it somewhere more permanent. Chat needs to be ephemeral.

by dchuk 4y ago

aaomidi 4y ago
Why?
chrismartin 4y ago
Disagree. The history is not just "chat". It's a valuable stream of questions and answers, problem solving, code snippets, bug reports, and user stories. It serves the purpose that a FLOSS project's mailing list archive did a decade ago. Did you know that SLACK was originally an acronym?
- mason55 4y ago
  Except with a mailing list, every conversation is grouped under a subject and all the replies are somewhere in the thread. On Slack, there's no such thing as a discussion-level subject, and people frequently end up replying outside the thread, or at a minimum there's other context outside the thread that people don't bother linking to because they think of chat as ephemeral, not that they are constantly building up an internal wiki.
  - chrismartin 4y ago
    When people bother to make them, channels provide discussion grouping at the subject level. Threads are an even finer-grained grouping that, granted, some people don't use. In my experience, all the problems you mention are also present (in some form) on mailing lists.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Then again, for all of the Slack communities I'm part of, the chat history is valuable because that's where the people prefer to hang out, thus that's where the valuable discussions emerge without anyone even planning it that way. There are often more durable options like a forum within the community, but that doesn't stop the Slack companion community from having high value discussions. You often don't know you're having a conversation worth having until it's done. Kind of like when you see really good discussion in Stack Overflow comments that you wish were upgraded into a community wiki question, but that's not how it emerged.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes. If you need the distinction, label it "discussion" instead of "chat", and assume that important discussions need to be kept around for reference. We have tons of one liner tickets with only a title and a link to a Slack thread, and it saves crazy amount of time and effort.
- abduhl 4y ago
  This is a poorly designed process because, as this pricing change underscores, Slack is not permanent unless you pay them in perpetuity. Why would you place so much power over your internal processes in the hands of a third party? It may save a crazy amount of time and effort (it does not) but it will cost a crazy amount of money through lock in subscriptions or eventually being forced out of the ecosystem because your chats are 90 days old. You could accomplish the exact same thing you’ve done by pasting the Slack discussion into the ticket or a text file with a link. Except you’d now control your future. So you’ve saved less than five seconds by copy pasting a Slack link instead of highlighting a bunch of Slack messages to copy paste.
  - chrismartin 4y ago
    Or you could use a libre and self-hostable chat platform (like Element on Matrix), and get rich discussion that costs little or nothing to keep around permanently.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      I see it rarely discussed, but self-hosting has a maintenance cost beyond server time: you need people with knowledge and competences to keep it alive. If the rest of your stack is not self-hosted the same way, you'll be keeping these people around just for your chat platform and some other perhaps non critical tools, which might not make business sense depending on your company...
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I don't know for your work environment, the last few companies I've worked for had a decent portion of their budget allocated to SaaS, from our ticketing system, customer support platform, marketing tools, BI, up to the hosting of our prod environment (and yes, they were also paying for Slack, and will probably continue doing so) I see this as the same philosophy as leasing computers or company cars, relying on third party delivery companies to ship your goods etc. It's a business choice, and solving some of your problems with money is usually a valid strategy. When it stops making sense you reevaluate your options, check competitors etc. PS: on pasting Slack text into tickets...it's really not optimal. If you really want the info in the ticket, spend the time to write a clear summary and still link to the original discussion. Formatting gets lost, or you're sticking screenshots of whole threads which is still horrible. To note, our ticketing system is basically a fancy reminder/todo list and we're not SCRUM, if that gives more perspective into why time spent writing detailed tickets hasn't a stellar ROI.
positr0n 4y ago
Slack is intended for exactly that durable use case. The name is an acronym for Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge
- cudgy 4y ago
  Now it’s an acronym for “Selectively Lost All Communications and Knowledge”

Nothing important should be singularly stored in a chat app. If it matters, store it somewhere more permanent. Chat needs to be ephemeral.

by dchuk 4y ago

Nothing important should be singularly stored in a chat app. If it matters, store it somewhere more permanent. Chat needs to be ephemeral.

aaomidi 4y ago

Why?

chrismartin 4y ago

Disagree. The history is not just "chat". It's a valuable stream of questions and answers, problem solving, code snippets, bug reports, and user stories. It serves the purpose that a FLOSS project's mailing list archive did a decade ago. Did you know that SLACK was originally an acronym?

mason55 4y ago
Except with a mailing list, every conversation is grouped under a subject and all the replies are somewhere in the thread. On Slack, there's no such thing as a discussion-level subject, and people frequently end up replying outside the thread, or at a minimum there's other context outside the thread that people don't bother linking to because they think of chat as ephemeral, not that they are constantly building up an internal wiki.
- chrismartin 4y ago
  When people bother to make them, channels provide discussion grouping at the subject level. Threads are an even finer-grained grouping that, granted, some people don't use. In my experience, all the problems you mention are also present (in some form) on mailing lists.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  Then again, for all of the Slack communities I'm part of, the chat history is valuable because that's where the people prefer to hang out, thus that's where the valuable discussions emerge without anyone even planning it that way. There are often more durable options like a forum within the community, but that doesn't stop the Slack companion community from having high value discussions. You often don't know you're having a conversation worth having until it's done. Kind of like when you see really good discussion in Stack Overflow comments that you wish were upgraded into a community wiki question, but that's not how it emerged.

makeitdouble 4y ago

Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes. If you need the distinction, label it "discussion" instead of "chat", and assume that important discussions need to be kept around for reference. We have tons of one liner tickets with only a title and a link to a Slack thread, and it saves crazy amount of time and effort.

abduhl 4y ago
This is a poorly designed process because, as this pricing change underscores, Slack is not permanent unless you pay them in perpetuity. Why would you place so much power over your internal processes in the hands of a third party? It may save a crazy amount of time and effort (it does not) but it will cost a crazy amount of money through lock in subscriptions or eventually being forced out of the ecosystem because your chats are 90 days old. You could accomplish the exact same thing you’ve done by pasting the Slack discussion into the ticket or a text file with a link. Except you’d now control your future. So you’ve saved less than five seconds by copy pasting a Slack link instead of highlighting a bunch of Slack messages to copy paste.
- chrismartin 4y ago
  Or you could use a libre and self-hostable chat platform (like Element on Matrix), and get rich discussion that costs little or nothing to keep around permanently.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I see it rarely discussed, but self-hosting has a maintenance cost beyond server time: you need people with knowledge and competences to keep it alive. If the rest of your stack is not self-hosted the same way, you'll be keeping these people around just for your chat platform and some other perhaps non critical tools, which might not make business sense depending on your company...
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I don't know for your work environment, the last few companies I've worked for had a decent portion of their budget allocated to SaaS, from our ticketing system, customer support platform, marketing tools, BI, up to the hosting of our prod environment (and yes, they were also paying for Slack, and will probably continue doing so) I see this as the same philosophy as leasing computers or company cars, relying on third party delivery companies to ship your goods etc. It's a business choice, and solving some of your problems with money is usually a valid strategy. When it stops making sense you reevaluate your options, check competitors etc. PS: on pasting Slack text into tickets...it's really not optimal. If you really want the info in the ticket, spend the time to write a clear summary and still link to the original discussion. Formatting gets lost, or you're sticking screenshots of whole threads which is still horrible. To note, our ticketing system is basically a fancy reminder/todo list and we're not SCRUM, if that gives more perspective into why time spent writing detailed tickets hasn't a stellar ROI.

positr0n 4y ago

Slack is intended for exactly that durable use case. The name is an acronym for Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge

cudgy 4y ago
Now it’s an acronym for “Selectively Lost All Communications and Knowledge”