
A lingering farewell to the username - jchavannes
https://api.slack.com/changelog/2017-09-the-one-about-usernames
======
StavrosK
Slack's authentication flow is the dumbest I've ever had the misfortune of
using. I'm a member of multiple Slack organizations, and it needs _one login
per organization_. I can't just have a single email address and join whatever
org I want, I have to remember _which_ email address I used for each one,
otherwise I can't log in!

I have multiple email addresses and don't use a specific one every time, so I
have managed to lock myself out of many orgs because I just can't remember
which email address I used.

If you click the "forgot my email" link, they go "have you forgotten which
email address you used to log in to which org? Just tell us your email address
and we'll tell you which orgs it's logged in to", which is exactly the
_opposite_ of what I want!

It's such a clusterfuck that I just avoid joining new orgs nowadays because I
know I'll never be able to log in again.

~~~
abtinf
I am in a number of different slack orgs. With one email address, I join
whatever org I want.

> I have multiple email addresses and don't use a specific one every time... I
> just can't remember which email address I [use]

I think I see the problem. I'm not sure how this approach allows you to
function on the internet at all.

~~~
benrbray
I have had a personal email, two school emails (undergrad + grad), and three
work emails (internships). Most of the Slack orgs I'm a part of restrict
access to emails from a specific domain (@university.edu, @company.com), so
each account is associated with at least one Slack org. It's a mess, and it's
because of poor design by Slack. I should have a "master" Slack account where
I can list all the email addresses that I own, giving me access to all the
associated orgs.

------
daenney
When this started rolling out it caused havoc for us. Without any warning that
this was happening half of the people in our org got their display_name set to
their full name, and the other half got their handle. For no apparent reason.

Within the technology parts of our org everyone knows each other by handle,
and we still let people pick their own handle when they join. It's even pretty
common to only know people by handle and not their real/full name. Monday
morning and all of a sudden you can't ping a colleague anymore by @username,
you have no idea why and now you need to know or find out what their first
name is. Eventually that got fixed for everyone but it made Monday worse than
usual.

I'm also not sure how this is going to interact with Enterprise Grid though.
Since display names aren't unique you can get two people in a channel with the
same display name. So if you now ping @John The Ripper, does it bug both, does
it not go anywhere?

~~~
daxelrod
See [https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/205240127-mention-a...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/205240127-mention-a-team-member#several-matches-of-a-display-name)
for a description of the UI for atting a duplicate display name.

~~~
octalmage
I think I like the way HipChat does it better. @ing is suppose to be quick, if
you have to click on a dialog every time you want to message someone that's
going to slow you down. Hipchat just doesn't allow duplicate display names.

------
sushimako
If I read this correctly, the "Enterprise Grid" section hints at one technical
reason for this move. Slack recently announced[0] a new feature that allows
multiple teams, err "Workspaces", to share a channel. This violates the
uniqueness of @usernames within the namespace of the shared channel, e.g. both
teams having a "@john".

This announcement anticipates (a) getting developers to use surrogate UIDs
instead of @username for mentions, and (b) that their clients will only use
display names in the future and rely on specific UI elements to distinguish
ambiguous ones.

[0] [https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/network-effects-
gett...](https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/network-effects-getting-
ready-for-shared-channels-600b7cc776df)

------
barnabee
I think they're missing the point, Twitter got the display name / username
dichotomy right:

Display Name: what everyone sees _next to_ your username, no guarantees that
you don't change it every 5 minutes though...

username: something short you choose and change rarely, can be cool,
memorable, fun, and quite creative, always unique

[Real Name: who cares, often necessary for work tools even though email ought
to be enough]

~~~
eugeniub
Twitter has some problems too. People do change their username, and every time
they do, all previous tweets mentioning them by @username lead to dead ends.

~~~
vidarh
If they do (I haven't verified if you're right) then that's an implementation
issue. Twitters API returns rich information about every mention that shows
they very well could store an association to the internal user id if they want
to.

But it may very well be for good reason. E.g. lets say an account is taken
over by someone who changes the account into something suitably offensive
after obtaining a lot of mentions. It would seem that treating a change as
basically "this is a new account now" is the safest alternative in some
respects.

------
systematical
In general the idea of a username is slowly being killed of across the web. In
the 90s when I got my first computer few would have been "crazy" enough to
user their real name. The anonymity of the web back then was so much fun.
Google and Facebook really started to kill that off and nowadays most sites
just use an email address for a login if they are not already using your Gmail
or Facebook for auth.

Long live the username on hacker news.

~~~
voidifremoved
Requiring comments be attached to a real identity invariably does the exact
opposite of what it intends to and lowers the quality of commentary. Sure,
some people use the cloak of anonymity to perpetrate abuse, misinformation or
low-effort participation, but the alternative has a chilling effect on
potentially thoughtful commenters who don’t want to become targets.

It doesn’t really get rid of the anonymous abuse or disinformation either,
because there are plenty of bots using fake social network identities out
there.

The real people that do remain invariably put about as much thought into their
contributions as they do into the long-term consequences of associating those
comments with their real identity, or are simply so angry or strident that
they don’t care.

Without real identities I would encounter islands of reason adrift in a sea of
inanity. With real identities, I tend to see the loud and ignorant shouting at
(or alongside) bots.

~~~
slfnflctd
> potentially thoughtful commenters who don’t want to become targets

I almost never discuss politics, philosophy, important personal subjects or
really anything of substance on Facebook. It's become purely for staking a
tether to a few hundred key individuals I want to keep track of but don't
need/want to talk to more than very rarely. Most of these contacts are not
close friends or people I see any point in arguing with (especially after
seeing the content of the most prolific posters).

Do you remember when Google actually encouraged people to use anonymous user
names? [What a 180 they did!] This was the default, established early on, for
good reason. It is a true democratizer, casting aside all to distinguish
anyone but their words and/or choice of posts. With one stroke, it eliminates
racism, sexism, ableism, name recognition bias, fashion snobbery and all other
means of discrimination by appearance or public life. It also raises the bar
for one to be taken seriously, as anything you say can be fact-checked
immediately.

The cult of personality infecting user representation on the internet has been
a tragedy to watch unfold. People would rather copy and paste words (usually
out of context) from someone on a pedestal to glorify or vilify than take the
extra step of vetting or responding meaningfully to what they say. I guess I
should have expected it, but it's still hard not to be disappointed.

TL;DR edit-- I meandered a bit, sorry. My point is that user anonymity results
in a more level playing field for discourse. Certain discussions of substance
benefit greatly from this. In the world of real names, ad hominem attacks or
hero worship all too easily derail productive debate. This can happen in
anonymous forums as well, but from my experience it's much better corrected
for in those places.

------
ToJans
I have no idea what the product manager was thinking here... Can someone
elaborate why this "feature" \- which implies potentially a lot of confusion -
benefits most users?

~~~
Operyl
So I think it’s because they’re introducing shared channels between multiple
teams/workspaces. As a result usernames can clash.

~~~
ToJans
I can't help but notice that slack is starting to get "enterprise" (threaded
comments, this username thingy, ... ). They seem to be introducing a lot of
complexity for all of the users, while only some of them would benefit from
these new features. I'm hoping that they start realizing this, and keep simple
chat the default, while allowing you to opt-in for all these "handy"
features...

~~~
jfoutz
At least the client is lightweight, using hardly any memory, disk, or CPU.

~~~
mmirate
Jokes are for Reddit, not HN.

~~~
0x62
If you think a comment is not constructive, off-topic or otherwise
inappropriate flag it and don't reply [0].

I see no issue raising a genuine concern with Slack's desktop app, which is
incredibly bloated – be it in a joke rather than a long-form comment.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
jakebasile
The best solution for the name collision problem that I've seen so far is used
by Discord and Battle.net, both in the gaming space where username is often
much more prominent than the real name.

You can set your username to whatever you want (e.g. "jakebasile"). You then
get a randomly assigned four digit number appended to the end (e.g. #5024). To
add someone as a friend, you need the full username#0000, but thereafter it is
not needed. To mention someone in a chat (in Discord) you type @ and then
start typing - it will match on either the user name or display name, but only
complete the user name. The key is that when you actually send the message it
will show that user's display name in chat and notify them as you'd expect.
Display names in discord can be overridden at the server level and in
Battle.net games there is the concept of Real ID instead which you can choose
to share your real name on a per person basis.

In both of these situations you are only using one account and one username
across either multiple games or multiple servers. This avoids having to use
many different accounts within the same application which is one of my primary
gripes with Slack.

------
vidarh
So, they're making things more annoying for most uses I have for Slack,
without providing any benefits for the uses I have for Slack (I get that it
may provide some benefit for others).

Sounds like it's time to say a lingering farewell to Slack.

~~~
sova
One e-mail linked to: many organizations and many channels, each with your own
customizable display name. I think that's the ideal, is this where they're
going with it?

~~~
vidarh
If so, it does not at all fit my use cases for Slack.

1\. Like with LinkedIn I need to be able to use multiple e-mail addresses, but
the current system of having to log in separately to each account is a mess.

2\. I want to be able to quickly mentioned people based on a username without
having to go via a disruptive dialog box. Not least because I want to be able
to mention people outside Slack and have integrations find the right person.

Display names are nice as an addition, but not as a replacement.

------
freakor
That is the most verbose and confusing post about a seemingly simple change
I've ever read.

"What's changing? Everything and nothing is changing" really doesn't help.

~~~
codazoda
I ready about half way through it and then came to the Hacker News comments to
figure if someone had decoded it.

------
hownottowrite
Sad to see this go... We use @username from external systems that feed into
Slack. For example, putting a comment on a Zendesk ticket using @username
alerts a person who would normally never pop into Zendesk to have a look.

~~~
octalmage
That's a really cool feature! We could really use that!

~~~
hownottowrite
If you're feeding Slack with Zendesk now, try putting an internal comment on a
ticket with the @. Oh, and since Zendesk forced everyone to the rich-text
client you need to escape out of the automatic name selection dropdown or it
will show up in Slack as @ __ _username_ __which does not trigger the mention.

------
TheCoreh
I don't fully understand what's changing: Slack always had the option to set a
"real" name. Is it simply going to transparently translate the name token
within messages to whatever preferred representation an organization choses?
If so, why is this being presented as "the death of the username"? Or is it
more complicated than this? (Perhaps an accommodation to integrate with
existing directory systems in larger corporate environments?)

Does Slack feel like having usernames somewhat visible and end-user facing
makes the product "too nerdy" for a general audience?

------
maneesh
what the heck? this is the stupidest move I've ever seen from Slack. Combine
this with a lack of using floating windows (like Messenger on Android) and
it's clear that the company is run by operations and sales --- not product.
There is clear space to move in on Slack's terroritory

~~~
coldtea
> _Combine this with a lack of using floating windows_

Floating windows? As if they are supposed to be good stuff?

Floating windows and MDI UIs have been phased out in most OSes, apps and GUI
toolkits in the last decades favor for far more stable and intuitive docked
sidebars and toolbars.

Edit: Is what I wrote inaccurate? Or it's just fans of floating windows voting
this down?

------
anotheryou
I didn't get it...

so how do I mention someone now? I still have to type @ for autocomplete, and
even if I type the realy name [return] completes to @username...

------
codezero
Not only are they phasing out @username, they are removing the very simple
/msg username – I now must type /msg @username and hit enter twice to initiate
a DM. It's annoying.

~~~
iDemonix
On Mac if you hit CMD+T you can just start typing a username (or channel name)
and as soon as it's selected, hit enter once. That's how I navigate around
Slack.

~~~
codezero
Yeah, I never got into that method, I guess I'm stuck on my IRC muscle memory.
CMD+T is new tab, not search! :P

~~~
yoz-y
CMD+K works as well. For me it is better since that is the shortcut I use for
quick open in QtCreator

------
jpswade
Dumb move. YouTube did this and it sucked.

------
theOnliest
They also removed your username/display name from your default highlight
strings. We often just use names with no @, and this week we noticed that
other people were no longer getting pinged for those. Now you have to go to
your preferences and explicitly add your display name to the list of strings
you want to be notified about.

------
return0
They 'll apologize and put it back in 2 months or so.

------
jrochkind1
I don't understand what they mean by "Unfortunately, an undocumented approach
to mentioning users — <@username> — no longer functions. Please reference with
the user ID format (<@U123>) instead".

Surely they're not saying slack users need to manually type opaque numeric
identifiers to properly mention other users? That would be ridiculous.

~~~
mdouglass
That’s the format a bot uses to mention a user. But, yeah, the wording is
confusing.

~~~
jrochkind1
Ah I see. Yeah, still not a fan. As someone else mentioned in the thread, some
bots are mainly integration, shuffle content from one system to another. This
will break mentions in IRC gateways for instance, no? Or, something Slack
might care more about, make it a lot harder to have a mention in a ticketing
or project management system trigger a mention in a Slack message.

~~~
mdouglass
Yeah it’s definitely a pain. I support a bot that we use for devops and I’m
already going through and doing a search/replace op in our commit messages
that get posted into slack.

Seems like this is a classic ‘push the work downhill’ thing they’ve done that
just costs all the devs who write slack apps.

------
Gonzih
So how is it gonna work now if I use irc gateway?

------
meesterdude
This is the most confusing thing i've read in a long time. Coming from slack,
that's kinda surprising and feels out of character.

------
whipoodle
This change is bad.

------
proofofstake
Please, make it possible to directly report or ban automated DM messages from
bots/apps.

------
MrZipf
Why is this HN material? It's a Slack customer advisory.

~~~
jchavannes
From a product perspective, it seems like a big decision and discussion about
it may be insightful to those building other products.

From an engineering perspective, those who have Slack API integrations may be
affected.

