
Is group chat making you sweat? (2016) - duck
https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-744659addf7d
======
simplehuman
Slack is great when used as modern irc. But many teams try to replace email,
issue tracker, ci, deploy all into slack and it becomes too much. People in
our company made all these integrations to paste back emojis into GitHub
comments, to create a new ci run and all sorts of things. Honestly, It was all
very irritating to be in love with a tool this way. Sort of like forcing emacs
to do everything (peace be upon emacs).

Thankfully it all came to a head when the buggy deploy bot made a broken
deploy and we started using it just for plain chat and moved to free plan
because we didn't want history on purpose.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I know I just got baited, but...

> _Sort of like forcing emacs to do everything (peace be upon emacs)._

Yeah, except that people force Emacs to do everything because it's more
convenient and efficient to do things this way. Things within Emacs are much
more interoperable than anything else[0] in your operating system - both by
having a no-bullshit, powerful[1] and consistent UI, and by being designed for
interoperability and third-party extension from the get-go. Basically
everything that deals mostly with text - and that includes IRC, issue
tracking, e-mail, etc. - is better done in Emacs than in a standalone (or God
forbid, _web_ ) tool.

Emacs OS maybe a weird and unpopular mindset, but it's a very _practical_
mindset.

\--

[0] - besides maybe terminal utilities, but we're talking applications with UI
here.

[1] - all the weird shortcuts doing text magic work on _everything_ in Emacs,
so the investment pays off across everything you do within this environment.

~~~
a3n
> [1] - all the weird shortcuts doing text magic work on everything in Emacs,
> so the investment pays off across everything you do within this environment.

People want their muscle memory to follow them. Emacs solved it by pulling
applications into Emacs. Vim/vi "solved" it by virtue of applications adapting
vim keyboard conventions. "Solved" in quotes not because it's not a solution,
but because the solution wasn't implemented in Vim, but in each application
where a developer wanted to use their muscle memory.

An excellent compromise solution is apps that use readline: you can use either
editor's muscle memory.

I have an addon installed in firefox that lets me use my Vim muscle memory in
firefox.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vimfx](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vimfx)

[https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx](https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's true only for the very basics. Applications adopting vim shortcuts, or
using readline, take on the most rudimentary navigation shortcuts. But that's
not what I meant about weird shortcuts doing text magic.

Consider e.g. e-mail in Emacs[0] as on this screenshot: [1]. Both the list and
the message you see on this screenshot are read-only UI, like in any terminal-
oriented app. Except that I can navigate through and manipulate them with
_all_ my usual Emacs shortcuts, including:

\- using incremental search to find a message of interest

\- doing regular Emacs region selection over multiple messages, to apply the
same action to many of them

\- semantic expansion of selection

\- using selection to spawn multiple cursors at appropriate places, and then
apply the same actions under each cursor

\- using M-x occur to do a "grep" on contents

\- using regexp highlighting to highlight lines or words matching regexp

\- using narrowing and widening to display only a subsection of the e-mail
list

... and many more, and all those examples _didn 't even touch e-mail-mode-
specific things_! That's just text-editing shortcuts over text UI! Those are
all the things you'll have in your muscle memory as a proficient Emacs user,
and you can use them everywhere - be it IRC, terminal, a REPL, list of
e-mails, etc.

In this way, "Emacs OS" UX is superior to my "host" OS UX (be it Windows or
Linux), because I can perform all those actions in an unified way, without
breaking my flow - and I have access to _very advanced /complex actions_ (plus
the ability to write my own, or download them from the Internet).

Oh, and even if read-only, the UI is still text, so I can just mark it all,
copy over to another buffer, and process it as if I was working with a
plaintext file. No need for scrapping anything.

EDIT: changed "expansion" to "widening" in the point about narrowing.

\--

[0] - which I just managed to get working, thanks to friendly HNers that
responded to me here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14569833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14569833).

[1] - [http://i.imgur.com/JpnxZSl.png](http://i.imgur.com/JpnxZSl.png)

~~~
klibertp
> using narrowing and expansion

Narrowing and widening to be precise. As many Emacs features, narrowing seems
useless at first, but it has surprisingly many uses. Especially with `expand-
region` installed: no matter where is my point, I can quickly select current
block, narrow the buffer to it and start using bulk-edit tools, like `iedit`
or `multiple-cursors` while being sure that they won't affect other parts of a
file.

> In this way, "Emacs OS" UX is superior to my "host" OS UX (be it Windows or
> Linux), because I can perform all those actions in an unified way, without
> breaking my flow

I still use the combo of urxvt+tmux+zsh though. I could probably get most of
the same features with Emacs+Elscreen+Eshell+Auto-Complete/Company, but
setting it all up seemed like a lot of unnecessary work, while I had my
`.tmux.conf` and `.zshrc` already configured before switching to Emacs. I'd
still love to switch to Emacs for terminal emulation, but all the available
options right now (from eshell to ansi-term) lack some important features I'd
rather still have.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes, narrowing and widening are the correct words for that :). Fixed, thanks!

I have the same thoughts about available terminal options; I'd love to use
Emacs for my terminal, but unfortunately there are always corner cases that
annoy me enough to keep me stuck to urxvt + fish.

------
tyingq
This resonated well with me. I've always preferred email to chat, for many of
the reasons cited in the article.

The trouble is, it's too far to the right. Some people don't respond for days.
So we have tools with instant response expectations, and ones with variable
expectations. Nothing with clear "within a day" expectations. Email used to be
that way, until too many peed in that pool.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Nothing with clear "within a day" expectations. Email used to be that way,
> until too many peed in that pool._

This is pretty much purely a social issue, and should be set by the management
/ work culture directly. Nobody can force you to reply to an e-mail any more
than they can force you to reply to a Slack message.

Because in private, I try to push as much communication as possible through
e-mail _exactly so that_ I don't have to reply to anyone within 24 hours if I
don't feel like it.

~~~
tyingq
Unfortunately, it spans farther than inside the company. There's suppliers,
outside counsel, partners, customers, etc. Voice for that sort of thing is
dying too, because people either disable, or don't check voice mail.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm in an enterprise environment; the death of voice is greatly exaggerated.
Voicemails? Not dead, just moved to text transcription delivered to my email
from unified messaging.

~~~
tyingq
Not dead for you. Too many of my colleagues and customers ignore it for me to
use it. I can't keep track of which ones still listen to them.

Edit: Yes, it's a people issue . Wasn't trying to frame it as a tech one.
We've ended up with two paths, reply now (slack, other IM, sms) or
reply/maybe/never (email/voice). For people reasons, as you say.

There have been some attempts to use tech to solve it. Google's inbox, for
example, might have helped unclutter so you could see what was important.

~~~
TeMPOraL
FWIW, in my country voicemail was probably dead on arrival. I'm yet to know
someone who actually relied on them and treated them as anything more than an
annoyance (if someone calls you and gets redirected to voicemail, they usually
disconnect, but sometimes that leaves an "emtpy" message which you'll get
later notified about). About the only use of voicemail I've ever experienced
is that in American movies (protagonist listening to their voicemail backlog
on their _landline_ seems to be a common trope).

------
harryf
Agree with the problems Jason identifies but not convinced by the solution:
his suggestions basically rely on the crowd to "get it right" (or on draconian
management to enforce rules).

I'd rather see something built from the ground up to get it right. Hiri for
example ( [https://www.hiri.com](https://www.hiri.com) ) tries this for email
-
[https://www.google.ch/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/hiri/a...](https://www.google.ch/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/hiri/amp/)
\- the product even includes features to rate colleagues emails and help them
improve.

By contrast I'm pretty sure if we could review Slacks internal documentation
we'd find it's been built to be addictive by design: its intended purpose is
to consume every second and minute you give it because that drives its growth
and success.

~~~
csydas
I'm not convinced that there is meant to be an addictive design flow to Slack
so much as it just facilitates familiar environments in a workplace
environment. A lot of people treat Slack like a gussied up IRC client, and
type and act just like they did when they were in their teens on IRC. Some
enforcement of a culture is necessary or else it will devolve into people just
spamming gifs and pictures, always with "okay guys, last one" tacked on as the
person is looking for the next gif to post.

The idea of communication feedback as noted in Hiri is interesting, but I'm
not sure it works well with a more spontaneous and instant communication
medium like Slack; chat lets you do off-the-cuff responses. Sometimes it's a
curt-but-true "check the documentation", other times it's a longer but quickly
made wall of text. Likewise, typically we write differently when there's a
larger audience than we do with it's just an email back and forth with a
colleague; at my last job, I definitely took a different approach talking to
my student employees who were there to learn than I did with my colleagues who
should already have some foundational knowledge of the topic at hand.

I forget where it was said first, but anything you measure will impel a person
to optimize his score on that metric. (taken from Harvard Business Review)
Competing and/or contradictory metrics can cause a lot of difficulty in a chat
environment like Slack which I think is meant to foster more spontanaeity than
it is a specific style of communication. It is important to curb bad
spontanaeity (e.g., aforementioned gif shitposting), but outside of general
"avoid this" rules, too many and you start to make people feel nervous or
unwilling to participate, especially since the weight of feedback is pretty
great to many people; just look at how self-censoring "Likes" make people.

~~~
harryf
I wonder if Slack usage feedback is a valid case for bots e.g. for a chat
that's suddenly very active involving multiple parties the bot might ask "I
see this is a hot discussion? Should I invite you all to a video conference to
discuss it?"

------
spookyuser
I know this is directed at slack but I've noticed the same thing on whatsapp,
where, in my circles - anytime there's a `thing` involving more than two
people it will become a whatsapp group chat before some people even kown
they're involved in the `thing`. You can easily rack up dozens of whatsapp
groups and even though they might not be business oriented they make me sweat
socially for most of the reasons listed in the article.

That's just the tip of the iceberg though, since it seems like an almost
natural instinct, at this point, to make a whatsapp group chat for everything.
School group projects are also added to whatsapp groups and with these
everything the author has listed is true. Probably even to a greater extent.

In one project I did a couple years ago our group never met physically for 99%
of the tasks, all the meetings we needed to have happened over group chat -
bearing all the problems listed in the article. I know for a fact that the
resulting work was diminished because of this. Yet, people seem almost
enthusiastic about transferring work to whatsapp.

------
ldp01
I find it hard to accept that this is a real problem... Managing a business
using only group chat just sounds incompetent. Even when I get together with a
couple of buddies to do a project we will use a combination of
communication/collaboration tools.

Even in my office I've never met anyone with a problem flipping between the
correct communication technology for whatever task.

We switch pretty seamlessly between,

* Email (with Outlook's calendar feature for organising meetings).

* Face to face meetings, (formal/informal, presentations, etc)

* Instant Messaging for time wasting but also for quick answers too. Almost always 1-on-1.

* Telephone for awkward but super useful communication with field crew.

* Atlassian's Jira. This is a recent addition and directly addresses many of the flaws of using email for coordinating projects. There are probably heaps of similar solutions out there, but I am enjoying this one.

The more channels the better!

------
greggman
This makes me curious, is group chat ever a win? Specifically the Slack
variety where everyone or almost everyone is logged in and therefore any post
by any person has the possibility of distracting everyone.

It seems like something more like personally messaging would solve the
immediacy problem. Open a PM (Slack, FB Messenger, Hangouts), add the people
you want to include in the discussion, start the conversation. Only those
people are notified, if more needed to be added they can be added. That would
seem like it would prevent more of the constant distraction part.

~~~
theshrike79
You only do that when you want EXACTLY those people to hear it - akin to
booking a conference room to discuss something with a certain closed group.

Talking on a channel is more like talking aloud in a team room with one or two
people, the other people are allowed to overhear and join if they have some
input. Or they can put on their headphones or tell the noisy people to get a
room or shut up.

With a team chat system you can just disable the notifications when you don't
want to be disturbed and read the backlog afterwards (if you're so inclined).
No need to tell anyone specifically to stfu. You can also be invited to the
discussion with an @mention and you can immediately read the previous comments
and join in without anyone having to spend 5-10 minutes re-explaining
everything to you.

~~~
marcosdumay
> Talking on a channel is more like talking aloud in a team room with one or
> two people

That's annoying enough on the real world. When an application not only makes
it the default, but makes sure you are placed in a bunched of noisy rooms at
the same time, it's bad.

There's no reason for "room" notifications to be enabled by default on any
application.

------
keithpeter
Quote from OA

 _" But the reality is that tools encourage specific behaviors. A product is a
series of design decisions with a specific outcome in mind. Yes, you can use
tools as they weren’t intended, but most people follow the patterns suggested
by the design."_

Reminded me of "our writing tools are also working on our thoughts". Our
brains are pretty plastic and will adapt to 'the rules of the game' and I
imagine that these days, those rules are defined by the affordances provided
by the software.

------
malkia
Sorry bit off-topic, but this caught my attention since english is my 2nd
language... So I'm thinking that "Does group chat make you sweat?" sounds a
bit better than "Is group chat making you sweat", but what about the meaning?
(Haven't read the article yet)

~~~
superplussed
The "Is group chat making you sweat" is using a verb form "continuous aspect"
which not all languages have. It's more of a feeling of being in the middle of
the situation, where "Does group chat make you sweat" is being asked before or
after the activity. It's more of a subtle, stylistic choice though and the
title could have been named with either of these sentences.

~~~
malkia
Thank you! Looks like I'm still n00b @ english!

------
rkda
Link to the old Hacker News discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614)

------
burgerdev
Sorry for being off-topic, but does anyone know why those medium-based sites
like signalvnoise, hackernoon, etc. all look super broken on Chrome?

~~~
Freak_NL
Are you running anti-tracker extensions? I am seeing the same thing in Firefox
with Privacy Badger running. Apparently these kind of pages need images and
other resources from medium.com, which is being detected as a potential
tracker.

Chalk it up to defective website design.

~~~
burgerdev
Thanks, that seems to be the problem indeed.

