What I wound up doing was creating more a naming scheme and limiting access to Slack channels which didn't need broad audiences. This removes a ton of unnecessary chatter and means messages won't get missed as easily.
e.g. I created ask_execs, ask_engineering, ask_marketing etc, team_engineering, team_sales, team_"region" (we have a few sub regions). Then we have are more generic channels, like announcements where company wide announcements are made, and press for press coverage, random for just that etc. I also setup bot_xyz channels for bots we have running for specific tasks.
I think that pretty much covers it. In the end we archived like 50% of our channels and it is a lot cleaner now. My opinion is this should be something that should be done every so often to keep some control over it and to make sure channels are used for the right purposes and not hijacked routinely by off topic discussions.
For the most part my company breaks things out into - public / general channels (IT, chit-chat, culture, annoucements, etc) - team-public - where you go to chat with a team directly - team-private - used mostly for internal discussions (tech discussions, PR requests, eng-to-eng questions, etc) - monitoring / alerting channels - where all the pings happen if something breaks, CI related info, etc
In general this approach works. Everyone in the company has permission to create a new channel (private or public).
>Additionally, the amount of workflows pumped into Slack in a unorganized, unstructured manor seems absurd.
this just requires someone to usher slack to an organized state. If you're having trouble finding the right people / channels, that's a Garbage In - Garbage Out problem.
> It's impossible to find knowledge in Slack. I don't find this to be true at all. The built in search feature is pretty decent, and has led me to solve a ton of issues without having to re-ask the question.
If you're company is using Slack as a knowledge dump, you may want to consider a wiki.
The amount of plugins, automation tools, and information you can pipe through slack is quite astounding. I know every one likes to bemoan how distracting it is, but honestly it's my favorite business-driven chat client to date.
In another position, it was organized by teams and sub-teams when relevant.
But in both cases, knowledge was stored somewhere else - like a wiki, or knowledge base. Slack was always used for immediate concerns.
If there's really something urgent enough that an immediate answer is required, then people either call/text or physically walk over to the person whose attention is needed.