Ask HN: Why don’t work chat apps have min character post requirement? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why don’t work chat apps have min character post requirement?

3 pointstiffanyh6 comments

My company uses Slack. The amount of noise in channels is extreme due to the low friction that Slack allows for one word responses, or people posting just an emoji or gif.

It seems like a huge amount of noise can be eliminated if Slack (or other work chat apps) simply required a minimum amount of characters for a channel post.

Does anyone know of a work chat app that allows for this requirement?

Note: this would only be a requirement for channel posts (not 1:1 chat). E.g. 100 character minimum post requirement for all channel posts seems like it would force really good chat edict - as well help reduce the “Slack stress” we’ve all come to experience)

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You are proposing a solution in search of a problem.

It's not character limit that's the problem, or even length (shortness) of messages.

It's how your company uses Slack. Look to change that.

You’re asking me to change the behavior of thousands of employees. That’s not a simple task.

Oh, right, it's much easier to change how millions of people use it.

My point was that you need to work on acceptable use policies: gifs and such are usually ok in those #watercooler channels, but nobody should be required to participate in them. At the very least, you can mute them.

I participate in a bunch of Slack channels where people are considerate, and introducing more friction in the tool to stop people from being inconsiderate is not the solution.

OTOH, more considerate approach also leads to (useless) channel propagation, but that's also down to how somebody decides to use it.

I still remember a time where people could and did have multiple parallel thoughtful discussions in unthreaded top-level messages in the channel (IRC): it wasn't that hard at all.

100 characters can still say very little of consequence; it is not a strong deterent to vapid posts.

Why would you want to prevent people from answering “yes” or “no” to a yes/no question?

If someone is asking for a yes/no to all people in a channel, using the thumb up/down emoji to the question is way cleaner than having 50 people in a channel post “yes” posts.

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