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Comment by angryasian | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely hate Slack. I imagine every organization is like this.

- theres no way everyone can follow everything going on in multiple channels. This makes it almost bs. Theres way too much noise and is overwhelming

- Theres too much lost information in channels and conversation threads etc. At least in email things are somewhat more permanent. As the channels go and more and more people are typing, so much context is lost, and unless you're following the thread you don't know whats going on and people just skip it most of the time.

- On top of that slack threads are lost forever in time unless pinned. The conversation rarely gets translated in to wiki or email or whatever so decisions are sometimes made and forgotten.

Overall I think these are solvable problems but requires a very opinionated way to work or creative solution ( a la google wave, yes it was an awesome tool ).

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Just like with all the various conversations that would happen in an office, the first thing I'd tell you is that it's ok not to follow everything in every channel. Trust that people will @notify you if your attention is needed. Catch up on the channels you want to when it's convenient for you - I often do my Slack catch-up during times I need to take a coding break or have a blocker.

As for information lossage and threads, get familiar with search. And also, when it's one of your messages, think about the words you may use to find something later and work them into your messages. Or for other messages, add a comment of your own with the keywords that should work to make things easier to find later. And if that becomes a trend for the team as a whole, everyone benefits.

I think being opinionated about "how Slack is used" can be helpful, especially if the team buys in. Hope some of the above helps somewhat.

the problem with search, is that its assuming you know what you want to look for.. which always isn't the case.

Which isn’t always the case* since sometimes it is the case

Counterpoint (from someone who highly prefers in-person communication and video/voice calls to Slack): Slack’s search feature is fantastic, and something I wish I’d discovered the benefits of earlier during Covid. It’s better than email, since I can search public channels even when I’m not included in the thread of discussion. It’s better than a Wiki if, as I believe is common, people aren’t diligent about dumping what they learn in conversation onto a Wiki page.

Searching slack is a superpower. You can solve problems you have zero domain knowledge in just by searching for past instances of that problem.

As someone not particularly social, it’s an amazing way to get unblocked without relying on another human.

search assumes you know what you're looking for. Its fine but I find it also hit or miss

> - On top of that slack threads are lost forever in time unless pinned. The conversation rarely gets translated in to wiki or email or whatever so decisions are sometimes made and forgotten.

I've literally been requesting a "export to wiki" feature from Slack, since 2016. After tracking really useful #dev chats, & then watching them disappear in the ether of subsequent non sequiturs & horrible slack search, I can only conclude Slack isn't interested?

Add in the loss of content from deactivated users, & Slack becomes the place where useful convos go to die, surrounded by giphys & emoji

You can automate this with a script or with a middleware platform of your choice. I work at a place that does this and we export answered questions into a company knowledge base.

A worthwhile message does not get ignored, especially when you "@" mention exactly the right people who need to hear it and you keep it straightforward.

Pinned messages are almost always propaganda by a product owner or similar. All the messages in between are usually useless reactionary bullshit that is neither actionable nor even informative.

Big companies, not all stakeholders are always known. sometimes they are notifying the wrong stakeholder. Its hit or miss I find.

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