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Comment by dwohnitmok | Hacker News Reader

It's tricky. Too much of this and it comes off as inauthentic and a company "trying too hard." Anecdotally I feel like this is a complaint that comes up from time to time on HN, but I can't find any examples at the moment. This is especially the case if all companies in the industry start doing this. See for example how many company products now have emojis splashed everywhere.

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Slack does it, when you clear out your unreads.

    All clear.

    Everything’s sorted!
    Let’s start something new.

    You’re all read.
    Here’s a pony.

    There! Caught up.
    Set your mind to something new.

    All done.
    The future is yours.

    Done and done.

    All done.
    The world is your oyster.

etc.

Salesforce is not a small company, and not one known for whimsy.

I think this is actually a fascinating difference between the cultures surrounding Slack and Discord. Both use this language—in fact, Discord uses it much more liberally, sprinkling all sorts of silly things around the UI—but because Discord is meant to be casual, it doesn't come across as cringey like it does in Slack.

There's lots of little details about Discord that make this work, too, from the layperson-readable changelogs written with an informal, friendly tone, to the Discord YouTube channel, which from what I can tell is basically just Discord paying some young people to do whatever they want to transparently market the product to Gen Z in a genuine, non-patronizing way.

I'm of the opinion that Discord has a much better user experience than Slack, and the only reasons I don't campaign to switch my lab over to it are:

a.) Slack has entrenchment/status-quo advantage, and

b.) Slack says it's "for professionals" while Discord targets "normal people", and heaven forbid we not use the product with "professional" stamped on it in our highly "professional" workspace!

TL;DR: I wish Discord would launch a marketing campaign targeted at middle managers saying "professionals use Discord too", I'm pretty sick of Slack at this point.

Slack also lets users easily make a group chat. In my experience, backed up by [1], Discord requires you to "Friend" members of the group chat before it lets you create the chat (requiring the user to send out a friend request, then wait for an acceptance, before starting the chat).

You could argue that group conversations are best suited for new channels, but I've personally had a lot of value from quick group chats in my experience.

[1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/223657667-Grou...

Discord also has threads, which are incredibly useful. Basically a short-lived subchannel that people can join. They fill a similar role to group chats.

Discord doesn't have threads* though, does it? To me that's one of the most important features of Slack. I've tried following discussions in Discord, and it's infuriating; there doesn't seem to be a way to look at a message's replies — you can only follow threads "backwards".

* https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-threads-to-...

Discord has a feature called threads, but it works differently to any other feature called threads anywhere else. You can pick an existing comment, create a thread starting at that comment, give that thread a name, and it works like a mini-channel - people can post comments in the thread, and they appear there, and not in the channel (there is no option to also post a message to the channel). Threads appear in the sidebar under their parent channels, and there's some UI to show that a comment has a thread hanging off it. After some period of inactivity, threads are archived, and no longer appear, but you can find them somehow.

We use them now and then on the gang group chat, but they don't feel as comfortable as Slack threads. I'm not sure why.

It's a bit weird that you name threads, rather than just replying to a root comment.

Discord also now has a thing called "forums", which is basically a highly mutated channel that works like a bulletin board. People make posts rather than comments, and there is a reply chain off each post. The structure is fundamentally the same as comments and threads, but it's laid out very differently.

I'm not sure if you were trying to provide an example, but if you were, I was trying to find an example where someone complains about the whimsy in a product, but it looks like you kind of elicited one in a reply to your comment, so ha yeah I guess that counts.

Slack is an acquisition, right? Did the whimsy come before or after?

Before.

We'll have to see how it lasts.

I use Slack, but that's because everyone else uses it.

I'm not especially happy with it. It's pretty buggy.

https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/926458505355235328

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