Slack so broken.
Discussion
i only just finally joined the #golang slack yesterday to ask questions about the GUI library i use
what about it do you think is broken? i feel like it has had a severe problem of feature creep and lack of refinement of the UI to make things neat, and yeah, actually, actual bugs i encountered today, i forget what it was exactly, something about the whole UI freezing or not updating or something
Yeah, emoticons are only half-there, it constantly freezes or spins, etc.
The entire premise of slack is broken. Gated multi-threaded conversations.
For most online discussions e.g. getting help with a particular technology, you don't want gated. That carries the implicit assumption that the tech in question is central to the user. I'd much rather /join #tech-channel ask and leave then to get onboarded to a slack channel, introduce myself, find the right subchannel, get ignored, and leave.
For internal project communication it is slightly better but also a bit stupid. Imagine working at a company located in a large Victorian Building where rooms open off a long hall. Each room has a name associated with a topic of discussion.
You show up in the morning and head to #Random say hello to everyone and get to chatting about work. "I say, Oswald, shall we head over to #finances I've a brief question about last week's numbers" once there the topics wanders to some other topic and so you agree to adjourn to another room.
The trouble is that everyone is walking past each other in the hall trying to find a room with anyone it in that vaguely matches what they need to talk about. But before asking you had better watch all the recorded footage from the room to make sure you aren't asking a duplicate question.
Persistent discussion dissuades discussion. The number of things that need to be recorded is small. We need a better way.
Something to try. An ephemeral irc like channel but with code formatting etc.
The get an LLM secretary. Have it write up daily minutes with the most relevant quotes.
Have a tool to search and quote from the minutes.
If your LLM Secretary sucks. Get a better one, don't try to reinvent talking.
Discord was broken earlier.
Nostr tick tock, next note.