4 ms·

> pay or lose months or years of history. You can download all your workspace data now, includes chat history. Chat history on free plan was already limited,

by jimvdv 4y ago

> pay or lose months or years of history. You can download all your workspace data now, includes chat history. Chat history on free plan was already limited, so I don’t think anyone who was aware of that was using it as an archive.

macintux 4y ago
You can’t download private messages, however.
- sporritt 4y ago
  I jumped up and down about this to Slack over the course of a few emails, having some paid workspaces and a couple on the free plan that I use(d) for family. Eventually I got one of those "Hi this is such and such, stepping in for the other person" emails, with a link to this app that can export everything (including private messages): https://export.fountstudio.com/ https://export.fountstudio.com/ The export is in a proprietary JSON format and only contains links to attachments, plus it has a limit on the number of messages you can export if you don't pay for it. But after jumping through various hoops one afternoon I was able to export all the messages and attachments from a family channel that we've had going for a few years - since our kids were first active on computers. The total number of messages was about 3500, but we would have lost the vast majority of them with Slack's new approach.
price 4y ago
No, some certainly were. There's one quoted in the blog post, for example. In a small community, and if you're not using it for lots of chit-chat but rather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages. So in that circumstance, it's pretty reasonable to have chosen Slack under its old policy. Especially if one wasn't aware of Zulip. ;-) (I'm one of the Zulip developers.)
- cauthon 4y ago
  > ather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages I don’t know what kind of scientists you’ve worked with, but I haven’t met any so short-winded
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    sounds like now you know of plenty!
  - prepend 4y ago
    I work with a ton of scientists (and am one myself) and I’m a member of multiple slack channels with hundreds of members that are years old and only have a 1-2k messages. An example is a Python users group where there’s maybe a few threads a week. And it’s really useful to search for old threads. Another is a hackathon with maybe 30 people where there were a few hundred messages over a week and then 1 message a month.
    - LtWorf 4y ago
      Self host a forum…
      - prepend 4y ago
        That’s what I’ll end up doing. Pretty much migrating all these chats off slack. Interestingly, these led to lots of pie licenses and we’re migrating all these over too. Once we’re self hosting a server then we don’t need the paid license either. Seems kind of much for $100/year/user anyway. Teams is bundled in with o365 for nothing or little extra.
aeturnum 4y ago
I don't mean to say that people were led to believe that free instances had no limits - just that this is a reversal of the nature of those limits. Groups that had planned based on the old limits are now in a tough spot. I'm glad to hear that you can do a full export though and I am surprised it includes the messages you can't access within the slack client.

by jimvdv 4y ago

macintux 4y ago

You can’t download private messages, however.

sporritt 4y ago
I jumped up and down about this to Slack over the course of a few emails, having some paid workspaces and a couple on the free plan that I use(d) for family. Eventually I got one of those "Hi this is such and such, stepping in for the other person" emails, with a link to this app that can export everything (including private messages): https://export.fountstudio.com/ https://export.fountstudio.com/ The export is in a proprietary JSON format and only contains links to attachments, plus it has a limit on the number of messages you can export if you don't pay for it. But after jumping through various hoops one afternoon I was able to export all the messages and attachments from a family channel that we've had going for a few years - since our kids were first active on computers. The total number of messages was about 3500, but we would have lost the vast majority of them with Slack's new approach.

price 4y ago

No, some certainly were. There's one quoted in the blog post, for example. In a small community, and if you're not using it for lots of chit-chat but rather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages. So in that circumstance, it's pretty reasonable to have chosen Slack under its old policy. Especially if one wasn't aware of Zulip. ;-) (I'm one of the Zulip developers.)

cauthon 4y ago
> ather for something focused like scientific research, you can go years and years without reaching 10k messages I don’t know what kind of scientists you’ve worked with, but I haven’t met any so short-winded
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  sounds like now you know of plenty!
- prepend 4y ago
  I work with a ton of scientists (and am one myself) and I’m a member of multiple slack channels with hundreds of members that are years old and only have a 1-2k messages. An example is a Python users group where there’s maybe a few threads a week. And it’s really useful to search for old threads. Another is a hackathon with maybe 30 people where there were a few hundred messages over a week and then 1 message a month.
  - LtWorf 4y ago
    Self host a forum…
    - prepend 4y ago
      That’s what I’ll end up doing. Pretty much migrating all these chats off slack. Interestingly, these led to lots of pie licenses and we’re migrating all these over too. Once we’re self hosting a server then we don’t need the paid license either. Seems kind of much for $100/year/user anyway. Teams is bundled in with o365 for nothing or little extra.

aeturnum 4y ago

I don't mean to say that people were led to believe that free instances had no limits - just that this is a reversal of the nature of those limits. Groups that had planned based on the old limits are now in a tough spot. I'm glad to hear that you can do a full export though and I am surprised it includes the messages you can't access within the slack client.