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I am surprised that Zulip is not mentioned in this thread yet. For people frustrated by slack's defaults of encouraging interruption and lack of structure and l

I am surprised that Zulip is not mentioned in this thread yet. For people frustrated by slack's defaults of encouraging interruption and lack of structure and lack of long-term retention of knowledge, Zulip fixes many of these issues. For people that just need any sync/async messaging tool, Zulip also happens to be open source and easy to self host.

davidmurdoch 3y ago
Lack of long term retention of knowledge? What do you mean by that?
- krastanov 3y ago
  In slack (or discord), due to its lack of structure, if someone explained some piece of institutional knowledge, that explanation gets lost in the "slackhole". Other tools are at least marginally better at preserving institutional knowledge
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    There are deep links and, if you pay for it, retention. Are you looking for a CMS, something like Notion maybe?
    - lygaret 3y ago
      in this tool (and others I've seen, maybe zulip does this), you can mark threads as "done", and mark messages as canonical. with slack, it's easy to have a thread with 15 different answers which are all slightly different. The "knowledge retention" features I'm looking for is being able to mark a thread as "this is the decision made", have that highlighted in metadata and archival, maybe be able to link off to a notion page, and have the thread closed to finalize the decision. EDIT: the number of times I've had to kick people off a thread because they're adding bad info during a crisis reallllly drives my desire for marking canonical messages lol
      - davidmurdoch 3y ago
        Ah, highlighting specific messages would be a neat feature to have in Slack! It aligns with their official acronym: Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  > defaults of encouraging interruption and lack of structure and lack of long-term retention of knowledge I guess the emphasis is on "defaults" because interruptions can be minimized by seeing notification levels and muting. Lack of structure? There are channels and threads, I'm not sure what else I'd need from a product like that. Retention is fixed by paying for it.
  - krastanov 3y ago
    Retention of knowledge needs a bit more than just a preserved log. Slack does not make it easy to mark important recurrent conversations for archival.
- jerpint 3y ago
  Any org will often have multiple users asking the same questions over and over again on slack. Apart from a search bar there isn’t a good way to archive or pin important conversations for everyone to see
  - krastanov 3y ago
    In slack indeed there is no good way. But other tools provide better ways to do it (with examples among sibling comments). I am not saying zulip solves much of this, there is probably a better tool, but they are at least not at rock bottom like irc/discord/slack.
  - rejectfinite 3y ago
    That's why you get a wiki or something like Confluence, Sharepoint, Google Docs pages etc etc and write shit down :)
    - necovek 3y ago
      Wouldn't it be nice if it was even easier to transfer from one to the other, or even better, if one tool served both needs? So let's applaud those who try, even if we believe they failed (or at least haven't succeeded yet).
felideon 3y ago
It also has that open source look and UX that mainstream users simply don't care for.
- krastanov 3y ago
  Really? I am very suprised to hear that. It looks very polished to me, and the UX has been much less frustrating for me (as someone who was on many slack teams over the last 4 years). My sample size is small, but fairly consistent in that evaluation.

davidmurdoch 3y ago

Lack of long term retention of knowledge? What do you mean by that?

krastanov 3y ago
In slack (or discord), due to its lack of structure, if someone explained some piece of institutional knowledge, that explanation gets lost in the "slackhole". Other tools are at least marginally better at preserving institutional knowledge
- barbazoo 3y ago
  There are deep links and, if you pay for it, retention. Are you looking for a CMS, something like Notion maybe?
  - lygaret 3y ago
    in this tool (and others I've seen, maybe zulip does this), you can mark threads as "done", and mark messages as canonical. with slack, it's easy to have a thread with 15 different answers which are all slightly different. The "knowledge retention" features I'm looking for is being able to mark a thread as "this is the decision made", have that highlighted in metadata and archival, maybe be able to link off to a notion page, and have the thread closed to finalize the decision. EDIT: the number of times I've had to kick people off a thread because they're adding bad info during a crisis reallllly drives my desire for marking canonical messages lol
    - davidmurdoch 3y ago
      Ah, highlighting specific messages would be a neat feature to have in Slack! It aligns with their official acronym: Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge.
barbazoo 3y ago
> defaults of encouraging interruption and lack of structure and lack of long-term retention of knowledge I guess the emphasis is on "defaults" because interruptions can be minimized by seeing notification levels and muting. Lack of structure? There are channels and threads, I'm not sure what else I'd need from a product like that. Retention is fixed by paying for it.
- krastanov 3y ago
  Retention of knowledge needs a bit more than just a preserved log. Slack does not make it easy to mark important recurrent conversations for archival.
jerpint 3y ago
Any org will often have multiple users asking the same questions over and over again on slack. Apart from a search bar there isn’t a good way to archive or pin important conversations for everyone to see
- krastanov 3y ago
  In slack indeed there is no good way. But other tools provide better ways to do it (with examples among sibling comments). I am not saying zulip solves much of this, there is probably a better tool, but they are at least not at rock bottom like irc/discord/slack.
- rejectfinite 3y ago
  That's why you get a wiki or something like Confluence, Sharepoint, Google Docs pages etc etc and write shit down :)
  - necovek 3y ago
    Wouldn't it be nice if it was even easier to transfer from one to the other, or even better, if one tool served both needs? So let's applaud those who try, even if we believe they failed (or at least haven't succeeded yet).

felideon 3y ago

It also has that open source look and UX that mainstream users simply don't care for.

krastanov 3y ago
Really? I am very suprised to hear that. It looks very polished to me, and the UX has been much less frustrating for me (as someone who was on many slack teams over the last 4 years). My sample size is small, but fairly consistent in that evaluation.