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Comment by ramoq | Hacker News Reader

I think I'll stick with email from now on.

Same here. It's very hard to get actual work done when one is constantly distracted by conversations that can't safely be ignored. Email is bad enough, in that regard.

An old-school analogy comes to mind. People used to BS in common space. But it was just BS. Decisions were made, or at least formalized, in meetings.

For what it's worth, last week I asked for help with user testing a couple new features on a startup in three different Slack groups I'm a member of, and also via around 150 cold emails. Response rates were 21x better to the same ask in a cold email versus a Slack message.

And this isn't just a one-off either, I've seen other people report the same thing consistently, where 'conversion' rates in response to even the most basic questions or asks are pretty much zero.

Like IRC vs email. #shocker

The difference is that with Slack you usually have some sort of common bond with the other people there, in terms of being either members of the same organization or else mutual alumni of some organization.

Because of that it's not immediately obvious that Slack should be no different than just asking a Linux question in some random FreeNode channel or whatever. That's actually a pretty big issue that doesn't bode well for the longterm viability of Slack, if (for example) it turns out that it leads to significantly worse organizational decision-making than email due to lower participation rates.

That's funny, since starting to use Slack I struggle to remember to check my email. Not much important happens there any more for me.

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