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Why do you have a "conversation archive"? Wouldn't you consider it really fucking weird if every time you had an informal, in-person discussion with a friend,

Why do you have a "conversation archive"? Wouldn't you consider it really fucking weird if every time you had an informal, in-person discussion with a friend, or maybe a partner, or even a co-worker, that they insisted on writing everything both of you said in a notebook to keep a permanent record of it, in case they wanted to call you out on something you kind of blurted out without too much thought ten years from now, or to be able to turn it over to the authorities if they ever (incorrectly?) thought you might be implicated in something dodgy? Or for it to be available for someone to steal and/or make copies of? They can never just have a chat with you? Shoot the shit and put the world to rights, without you keeping meticulous records of every goddamn word they said off the cuff? You don't think that, maybe, the more our real lives move online, the more that that kind of friendly, informal, ephemeral conversation ought to be able to move online?

xxpor 3y ago
As perf evals become more thunderdome in this environment, this issue is going to get worse, not better.
pests 3y ago
Tools are see up to log by default. Apps exist for the ephemeral conversation you desire. Like Snapchat. Where one of the features is conversations disappear. I don't think everything is so gloom and doom like you make it out to be.
jcul 3y ago
These are not informal conversations though. Maybe a small percentage is informal on slack, but even that is "SFW" communication that no would would care if it is logged. It's script snippets, customer support information, links, design decisions etc. Of course this stuff should be preserved in knowledgebases, tickets, commit messages etc, and it is, but sometimes people forget or something doesn't seem worth documenting. That's slacks main selling point for me, the ease of finding some technical conversation from 6 months ago.
- NotSammyHagar 3y ago
  It's supposed to be SFW but the endless series of articles and lawsuits about info found in slack shows it's not really sfw across the business world. And yeah its true for all other texting systems.
em-bee 3y ago
it sounds weird, but there is a reason why i prefer written over spoken communication. it helps me remember what we talked about. very often i need to find some detail that i remember me and my wife discussed. if we did in in text chat, i can often find it. if it was a phone call it is lost forever (audio recordings are useless until the tech has evolved to make them searchable) yes, it is a tradeoff. most things don't need to be recorded. but what we like to record and what not varies from person to person. many chat apps allow you to temporarily turn on automatic deletion of messages, and some allow you to delete old messages. it would actually be good to do from time to time to weed out the actually irrelevant stuff but it takes effort to do that. the key feature though for me is that recording messages helps me resume an interrupted conversation. and when you get older and start loosing friends as they pass away, these are also memories of the good times that you have had together. what we need is better laws to protect our privacy, that say don't allow old messages to be used regardless if they are stored or not, so that we don't run into the current situation that those who were so dumb to not delete the messages are at a disadvantage.
paulddraper 3y ago
> they insisted on writing everything both of you said in a notebook Like....my emails? My SMS messages?

xxpor 3y ago

As perf evals become more thunderdome in this environment, this issue is going to get worse, not better.

pests 3y ago

Tools are see up to log by default. Apps exist for the ephemeral conversation you desire. Like Snapchat. Where one of the features is conversations disappear. I don't think everything is so gloom and doom like you make it out to be.

jcul 3y ago

These are not informal conversations though. Maybe a small percentage is informal on slack, but even that is "SFW" communication that no would would care if it is logged. It's script snippets, customer support information, links, design decisions etc. Of course this stuff should be preserved in knowledgebases, tickets, commit messages etc, and it is, but sometimes people forget or something doesn't seem worth documenting. That's slacks main selling point for me, the ease of finding some technical conversation from 6 months ago.

NotSammyHagar 3y ago
It's supposed to be SFW but the endless series of articles and lawsuits about info found in slack shows it's not really sfw across the business world. And yeah its true for all other texting systems.

em-bee 3y ago

it sounds weird, but there is a reason why i prefer written over spoken communication. it helps me remember what we talked about. very often i need to find some detail that i remember me and my wife discussed. if we did in in text chat, i can often find it. if it was a phone call it is lost forever (audio recordings are useless until the tech has evolved to make them searchable) yes, it is a tradeoff. most things don't need to be recorded. but what we like to record and what not varies from person to person. many chat apps allow you to temporarily turn on automatic deletion of messages, and some allow you to delete old messages. it would actually be good to do from time to time to weed out the actually irrelevant stuff but it takes effort to do that. the key feature though for me is that recording messages helps me resume an interrupted conversation. and when you get older and start loosing friends as they pass away, these are also memories of the good times that you have had together. what we need is better laws to protect our privacy, that say don't allow old messages to be used regardless if they are stored or not, so that we don't run into the current situation that those who were so dumb to not delete the messages are at a disadvantage.

paulddraper 3y ago

> they insisted on writing everything both of you said in a notebook Like....my emails? My SMS messages?