
Show HN: Bot to steer discussions from Slack to Discourse - mrjn
https://medium.dgraph.io/wisemonk-a-slackbot-to-move-discussions-from-slack-to-discourse-22a53ddce78f#.5zv27u6mt
======
Kratisto
Wow until about half way through the article I read Discourse as Discord, and
it didn't make any sense to me. Now that I understand, this seems like a
pretty cool solution. I have been really loving both slack and discord for
personal use. Unfortunately, my work use Skype for business. I have been
pushing for a switch to slack.

~~~
seangrogg
I read exactly the same thing - I was wondering if he was going to start
touting how amazing it is to be able to just start talking with people in
"Engineering Rooms" or something.

------
bhaak
> Discourse has become such an integral part of our company that we abandoned
> making decisions in meetings entirely.

That's really impressive and cool.

Being an old Usenet fart, I have some problems with Discoure's linear
discussion threads (I don't have that problem with twitter's similar structure
though).

But I guess if you can keep people on topic and open up new threads for
discussions that get side-tracked, it can be a really cool tool.

~~~
schoen
Have the Discourse developers ever commented on whether they deliberately
didn't support visualization of the thread structure? The software appears to
_know_ the thread structure (because there's a specific UI to reply to, and
quote, a particular message), but it doesn't do much to _show_ it to a reader
-- or provide other thread features that you might find in a news reader, like
marking a subthread as read or hiding it.

Do we know if this is something Discourse might support in a future version?

~~~
alexhutcheson
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-
design...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/)

~~~
Macha
The continued success of Reddit (basically wiping out flat by default web
forums) and the fact that Facebook has at some point between then and now
introduced threading seem to prove it isn't too complex for most users. Only
the old vBulletin pagination + threading model was.

~~~
danneu
Meanwhile you can't have deep discussion on Reddit or HN. When a new
submission is made, the peanut gallery storms the top-level. Then a little bit
of discussion nests a few levels, but it's pretty much a one-on-one discussion
due to the nesting. And since topics can't be bumped, the discussion is
ephemeral. And if you have something to say on a topic that's more than 24
hours old, then only the person you're replying to will see it.

Traditional forums have other issues, but longform discussion among multiple
people over periods of time is possible.

~~~
jotux
I feel exactly the opposite. Traditional, non-nested, forums with more than a
few users end up with many pages of @author comments that make it difficult to
track the course of the conversation. With nested comments I know exactly who
someone is replying to and the topic they're discussing. I think the issues
you're pointing out (top-level peanut gallery, no bumping, >24 hours old) are
more problems with news-driven websites than nesting vs non-nesting. If you
had a reddit-style nested private niche-topic forum the pace would be slower
and the problems you point out would probably be less of an issue.

------
johanneskanybal
Sounds like it's working for you. Why people don't turn notifications off is
beyond me though. Still, curating/making asynchronous is the biggest issue
with slack so thumbs up.

~~~
mrjn
The main reason for not turning off notifications is the fear of missing out,
decisions being made without you. And it's a very valid fear.

~~~
enraged_camel
You seem to have posted this in multiple places. I don't think it's a valid
fear at all. If people are constantly monitoring Slack for fear of missing out
on decisions, then don't make decisions over Slack. It's really as simple as
that.

We have policies that dictate what types of conversations belong in Slack and
what types of conversations don't. If something requires a person's input,
they are summoned to Slack via a mention. Otherwise, it's widely understood
and accepted that Slack is primarily for Q&A, collaboration, sharing of cool
finds, and what we classify as "general chat."

Other than that, we also have meetings (both in person and via remote
session/conference) for more important topics and decisions. The results of
those meetings are communicated to the team via email (which everyone is
expected to check twice per day).

If you try to use Slack for _everything_ , it will fail for you. That holds
true for any tool.

~~~
mrjn
Agree. In fact, that's the main motivation behind this bot is to ensure that
we don't use Slack for everything.

But, it goes beyond that. We also realized that Slack wasn't a productivity
enhancer, it was a bonding catalyst. And realizing that helped us steer
conversations away from Slack.

In other words, Slack for us is the equivalent of what would be considered
water cooler talk.

------
tokenizerrr
I recently had to deal with some Discourse users trying to hijack my
community's discussions to a Discourse chatroom. Absolutely awful experience
and terrible client support.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Are you talking about Discord?

~~~
tokenizerrr
It seems that I am. I even read the blog post thinking it was about Discord.
Apologies.

------
robbfitzsimmons
Instead of going through contortions trying to break bad Slack habits and
worrying about the API getting shut off, maybe it's worth checking out
something made for the purpose.

In the original post from the AgileBits team quoted at the top, that team
tried Basecamp, which to me seems to do a good job of separating
thoughtful/long-form discussion from chat, along with the weekend-pause
feature.

------
davidbanham
Very excited about this! We're on the same path of Slack+ Discourse. We tried
switching chat to other tools that would be more fit for purpose but just
couldn't drive engagement. Slack is too sticky.

I'm planning to take this bot for a spin today. Aside from that, it's just
great to hear there are other companies feeling the same pains as we are.

~~~
mrjn
Awesome! We took that detour as well, tried a bunch of other chat apps, but in
the end, Slack won out. It's the most mature chat system out there.

With Wisemonk keeping us accountable, we're now able to tackle the negatives
of Slack; so eager to learn your experiences.

------
indspenceable
Or just turn off notifications on every message? I only get notified on
@mentions and I don't feel like I'm oncall.

~~~
mrjn
The main reason for not turning off notifications is the fear of missing out,
decisions being made without you. And it's a very valid fear.

One team member going away from Slack is bad for the member and for the team.
If everyone else participates and you're on the sideline, then you're an
oddball and not a team player.

For it to be effective, the whole team has to willingly move away from it.

~~~
jrockway
Do you all work at companies that don't do design reviews and code reviews?
Those seem like good ways to keep people in the loop and get feedback on
idea/code. Code reviews should be interrupts, but nothing else should be.

I find the amount of work one can practically achieve in a day to be a good
limiter of how much people will be kept out of the loop if they are not
actively engaging in their email (or whatever system people use). The reality
is, no matter how fast you think you're moving, it's not that fast.

~~~
mrjn
We do pretty strict code reviews [https://github.com/dgraph-
io/dgraph/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=i...](https://github.com/dgraph-
io/dgraph/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed) . Nothing goes into
master until it gets LGTMed.

The point was that, if all of your team members are having a conversation, but
you're not, you'd feel left out. Of course, you might not care, but a lot of
people who feel they're active part of the team do; and discourse allows us to
do that very well.

------
gingerlime
Not too familiar with Discourse, and I'm curious about the difference to
trello comments on a card (in this context of taking discussions offline from
slack.)

Could anyone who uses both trello and discourse care to comment about the
difference in experience?

~~~
mrjn
We at Dgraph use Trello as well. TBH, the commenting on Trello is primitive
compared to Discourse. We still comment on Trello when we're talking about
specific cards -- but if it needs thorough discussion, we always go to
Discourse.

In fact, it's pretty common for us to create Trello cards out of discussion at
discuss.dgraph.io.

Also note that we keep our Slack only for general chit chat. As soon as
something becomes more "structured", we switch it to Discourse. We also
actively encourage people to just create topics there instead of bringing it
on Slack in the first place.

------
Illniyar
Huh, I can only assume slack is going to remove this api very soon after this,
nothing makes companies clamp down on openess sooner then syphoning off users.

~~~
smaili
Shouldn't developers have the freedom to create whatever they like with "open"
APIs made available?

~~~
diyorgasms
Absolutely they should. But I don't think a rational self-interested company
would continue to allow those APIs to be used in order to facilitate a
competitor siphoning off users.

~~~
ErrantX
I think a completely rational company should try to understand the problem.
This is a relatively "known" problem with Slack and other realtime chat (i.e.
the timesink issue). It's one reason I'm always cautious every time someone at
work gets excited about "soon we'll have Slack!!!" based on experiences at my
last employer where it sucked up productivity like a black hole.

I've seen a growing number of people actively moving away from Slack or
complaining about it due to these issues. How can Slack fix that? Close off an
API to stop hiving off users? Well the explicit intent of this approach is to
use _both tools_ so it doesn't seem like they lose much.

Either way; I'd argue that a rational company would look at why it's customers
were doing these things and then either a) add that feature to the product or
b) let things alone.

Slightly different if it's an "export your Slack chat to A.N.Competitor".

------
mrmondo
Right on, I approve of this. I wish people would give up on slack already -
it's a proprietary hype machine that's made it's way to the core of too many
complex systems.

~~~
Kiro
So, do you have any real criticism or do you just hate proprietary software
and hyped things?

~~~
moron4hire
For FOSS advocates, the proprietary nature _is_ the criticism, as proprietary
software has been shown time and time again to be harmful to users.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>as proprietary software has been shown time and time again to be harmful to
users.

A bold claim that requires quite a bit of evidence, in addition to evidence
that the alternative (FOSS) is not harmful.

~~~
moron4hire
It _is_ the core thesis of FOSS. [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-
sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html)

