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Comment by geekuillaume | Hacker News Reader

One of the problem I always have on Slack or other chats is the 300+ unread messages after being offline for a day or two. I tend to skip everything but sometimes I miss things I should read...

A solution?

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I think it's a common misunderstanding that we must read everything in Slack. You don't have to. If something's important it will come up again, or if it's directly relevant to you then someone will tag you. When someone asks about a Slack conversation you didn't see, just say you missed it. It's a better norm than being expected to stay up to the minute on every word uttered by every employee.

Indeed. As far as I can tell, the premise of Slack is that it's like email, except instead of saying "I'll do this tomorrow" and starring the message in your inbox, you just either handle it right now, or completely forget about it and it's lost to the Depths Of Time until someone else remembers again.

Switching from email to Slack is basically a test of whether or not an organization actually has some task tracking in place. If not, then Slack's claimed 41% reduction in email volume becomes a 41% reduction in customer volume. "Less work for me!"

>Indeed. As far as I can tell, the premise of Slack is that it's like email

I never understood that. It's not like email. It's corporate IRC.

If you've been at a company where email was treated as corporate IRC, Slack is quite refreshing. :-)

> If something's important it will come up again

So why use it at all? That's rapidly becoming my thought on this Slack mess.

If it's important they'll call me or send an email. Just like in 2015.

> just say you missed it

Technology is supposed to make data manageable. If it doesn't then it's a failure.

I've deleted the Slack app from my phone. It has progressed through the stages of Usenet in a few years. Now the signal is unrecoverable in the noise. It has failed.

I don't think any technology makes data manageable in the sense that you want it to. Summarising information is still relegated to humans, and filtering noisy sources of information is on you.

For instance, your company might have a hundred slack channels and private conversations. You could be interested in five (channels specific to projects you're on, things you're interested in, or non-critical alerts), not interested in ninety (other projects, functional groups you don't care about, other groups' lunch plans), and actively disinterested in another five (#random, #politics-that-make-me-angry, #synergy, #build-system-spam).

The problem is your team, not the platform. Use channels, be disciplined about what goes on in the channels. Use threads for side conversations. Use private messages when needed.

why use it at all? you may not be the one who chooses what tool your team uses for communication.

>I think it's a common misunderstanding that we must read everything in Slack. You don't have to.

For sure, but the UX around unread messages triggers my OCD.

I have the same problem but you can always use the combination of cmd+shift+esc to mark everything as read.

That's a people problem that needs a people solution.

I would agree with this. Seems like a flag on a message that is considered important would be all that is needed.

Soon there will be an extension which automatically flags all messages sent by the current user as important.

It already exists, it's called Gmail. I've audibly remarked more than once, as if the Gmail UI could respond to me in kind: "if you mark everything as important nothing is important"

Fine you can't flag your own message as important, others have to tag it important.

Doesn't apply to Slack, but Zulip's solution is use topics : https://zulipchat.com/hello/

Temporary and if it needs an answer, answer only makes sense if near immediate: use IM (slack etc...)

Just an FYI that everybody needs to know or needs an answer regardless of when you can answer: use email

Information that is valid until a major change (or forever if that exists): document in your wiki or whatever documentation system you use.

When I'm back from time off, I mark all slack channels as read.

You should checkout Zulip https://zulipchat.com/why-zulip/

Disclaimer: I am a full time contributor at Zulip.

Anything important enough that should not be missed should be sent in an email. Slack, IRC, and other chat-likes are additional communication channels—they shouldn’t be a primary mission-critical delivery system.

I've started enforcing a thread only mentality in most of the channels at my work. It lets you easily catch up on the topics you care about.

what would you like it to happen? the extension may be able to filter the ones sent in the last N hours and adjust the number of unread... but that wouldn't solve the problem of missing things you should read.

Shift + Esc

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