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For those that are confused about the value of Slack – It's not just about text chat. It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulnes

For those that are confused about the value of Slack – It's not just about text chat. It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulness and knowledge drain. If we put it on Slack, it's archived "forever" and a team member a few years from now can start with a Slack search before re-inventing the wheel. This is especially evident with the integrations. If just the relevant slice of data is fed into Slack, it's easier to digest than running a full report in another tool. And it's now part of the corporate history. So finding patterns of endemic problems becomes much easier.

napoleond 11y ago
> It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulness and knowledge drain. They are far from achieving that vision. I agree that company-searchable chat (and email) is valuable, but I doubt it will ever replace proper internal documentation--any other approach is far too noisy, and without a lot of context it's impossible to know if correspondence about an issue from two years ago is still relevant today.
- feverishaaron 11y ago
  Ah, but it searches inside files and any connected system as well. So If I search for "Arc Code:500" it will show me any chats, any github pull requests and any Google docs that mention that phrase.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
If we put it on Slack, it's archived "forever" and a team member a few years from now can start with a Slack search before re-inventing the wheel. Heard that one before. If Slack gets eaten by Google etc...that might not be the case. I am preferential to self hosted solutions.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  To play devil's advocate, your self hosted server could go up in flames one day too...or it gets hacked. Obviously there's risks with any solution. As to the magnitude of each risk, it's hard to say, but I'd agree with you that getting bought out by someone else and your data being lost or compromised in the process is a pretty big one.

napoleond 11y ago

> It's about comprehensive search and combatting organizational forgetfulness and knowledge drain. They are far from achieving that vision. I agree that company-searchable chat (and email) is valuable, but I doubt it will ever replace proper internal documentation--any other approach is far too noisy, and without a lot of context it's impossible to know if correspondence about an issue from two years ago is still relevant today.

feverishaaron 11y ago
Ah, but it searches inside files and any connected system as well. So If I search for "Arc Code:500" it will show me any chats, any github pull requests and any Google docs that mention that phrase.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

If we put it on Slack, it's archived "forever" and a team member a few years from now can start with a Slack search before re-inventing the wheel. Heard that one before. If Slack gets eaten by Google etc...that might not be the case. I am preferential to self hosted solutions.

bsbechtel 11y ago
To play devil's advocate, your self hosted server could go up in flames one day too...or it gets hacked. Obviously there's risks with any solution. As to the magnitude of each risk, it's hard to say, but I'd agree with you that getting bought out by someone else and your data being lost or compromised in the process is a pretty big one.