
Ask HN: How do you feel about Slack developer communities? - aosaigh
I&#x27;ve noticed quite an increase in non-commercial project developer communities that use Slack as their primary medium of communication, particularly for help and developer-related inquiries.<p>My gut reaction to this is a negative one, where I feel like the siloing of developer releated questions and answers is against the nature of the web, and more importantly detremental to the community itself, as it prevents discovery of previous discussions in forums, Google Groups, Stackoverflow etc.<p>How do you feel about these?
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agf
My experience with these communities is that they are very close to non-
functional, for several reasons. I use paid Slack, to pretty good effect,
every day at work.

First of all, they have to rely heavily on hacks to store information long-
term because of the 10,000 message limit.

Second, even with fairly diligent use of Google Docs for important stuff, tons
of info is still lost. I've got a slack where I have DMs with four different
people starred. But for two of the four, I have no idea why, because I don't
recognize the names and the entire conversation history is gone.

Third, where the message limit is less of an issue, and low barrier to entry
is important -- ones with a lower activity rate, and where the community is
not super close-knit -- tend to suffer from constant challenges to the group's
norms. People drift in and out, wanting to argue again and again about how
it's OK for them to use exclusively male pronouns all the time, or how it's OK
for them to discuss irrelevant topics. This takes up a ton of the message
history, and lowers the information density.

Like it or not, IRC, with a web client, and a publicly available archive that
is searchable, is far more functional for this situation. Paid Slack is a
pretty good tool for work communication, but the free version, for now,
doesn't translate well to open communities.

~~~
amorphid
> My experience with these communities is that they are very close to non-
> functional

I had really good luck with the Elixir Slack channel when I was first starting
out with the language. I guess I'd say Slack can be a great newb friendly
place to ask dumb questions. There were plenty of times I didn't know what to
Google, because I didn't understand a basic concept, and I couldn't figure out
how ask a clear question on StackOverflow. When you're in newb territory,
having a Slack channel full of helpful people is nice.

~~~
Hoasi
> When you're in newb territory, having a Slack channel full of helpful people
> is nice.

Exactly my experience as well. In those cases, Slack is just like an old
school IRC channel with a shinier interface.

~~~
seba_dos1
You both missed the point, which is - for such use cases, Slack is even worse
than an old school IRC.

~~~
Hoasi
Well, in those cases you go where the community is. Maybe one is better than
the other, but my personal preference doesn't matter here. I would still use
one or the other, regardless. If something better comes along, you should use
it.

------
TeMPOraL
I don't mind the chat aspect. Instant chat is something common in communities,
development or otherwise. I used to hang out on my share of dev IRC channels
back when I was younger. I'd argue that instant chats like these are actually
_crucial_ for maintaining communities.

I mind _Slack per se_. I could understand non-technical communities going for
it, but developers? Come on. Why choose a commercial walled garden that forces
you to use a single, heavyweight and non-ergonomic interface? A product made
by a startup, which can unpredictably go in any direction _including
disappearing overnight_ , if some big corporation opens their wallet widely
enough?

~~~
always_good
Because even developers appreciate the same UX ergonomics that our end-users
users do. Did you think everyone uses Vim?

I don't really if all chat messages disappear. It's chat. It's ephemeral. No
value to me beyond sentimental. And most people including myself think the UI
is ergonomic, and far more featureful than any IRC client when nobody bothers
to run their IRC clients on an always-on server.

The worst part of IRC is that everyone is offline the second they close their
laptop or client when their question is. They won't be seeing your message.
That only a few power users will bother to receive messages "while offline" is
also a mark against IRC for the general public. Notice that developer /= IRC
power user. Not even close.

~~~
factotvm
I disagree with you that Slack is an ergonomic interface. I'll give two
examples off the top of my head:

    
    
      1. New Threads sort with new items at the top.
         This is opposite of everywhere else in the 
         app. And there is no indicator, e.g. the 
         date isn't displayed.
    
      2. Try backspacing over an @ mention or two.
         It is very unpredictable behavior.
    

I could find many more if I had Slack in front of me. I'm not saying that IRC
is the solution, but I can't believe that Slack is the best we can do.

~~~
always_good
I claimed it was ergonomic (at least more ergonomic than IRC since that was
the comparison), not flawless.

And many of those ergonomic points come from features that IRC clients don't
even have.

~~~
factotvm
And I'd rather use Vim.

~~~
s0l1dsnak3123
Me too, but we're not the target demographic. In any case I think Matrix is
the best bet for open communities right now - it has full slack integration
anyway.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Me too, but we 're not the target demographic._

Well, that's a problem. How is it that tech savvy people created a tech
industry that increasingly caters to _everyone except the tech savvy people_?
It's getting really annoying. Operating systems are gradually losing features.
A lot of software moved to the web, shedding functionality, and they evolve
towards dumber and less functional forms over time. Smartphones are getting
locked down and dumbed down. Hell, the only smartwatch company that made tools
instead of toys went down, and I can't get a sensible smartwatch either. I
don't like this trend.

------
deft
They're unsearchable (with google), require an account just to read and have
no seperation of discussion besides channels. I prefer forums.

~~~
indigodaddy
Zulip has "topics" inside streams (kind of what they call channels).

------
mooreds
I don't like it for a number of reasons:

* Exclusivity. Often they require some kind of signup before you can even read it. This isn't a big deal but I prefer a more open discussion.

* Lack of google visibility. Lots of good discussions will benefit the asker and a few people in the slack but no one in the future, searching for the same information.

* Lack of searching for the members. Once you get to 10k messages, you can't search the older ones. If you have a large slack, it doesn't take long to get there. And unless see company is willing to pony up thousands of dollars a month, those discussions are lost forever.

On the other hand, maybe three memory hole aspect of slack is actually a
feature not a bug. Perhaps it lets folks speak more freely.

~~~
emidln
> * Lack of google visibility. Lots of good discussions will benefit the asker
> and a few people in the slack but no one in the future, searching for the
> same information.

> Lack of searching for the members. Once you get to 10k messages, you can't
> search the older ones. If you have a large slack, it doesn't take long to
> get there. And unless see company is willing to pony up thousands of dollars
> a month, those discussions are lost forever.

This is the default state on the old real-time communication medium, IRC.
Communities can solve the problem on Slack the same was as on IRC, using
accounts controlled by bots who log channel messages. If the bot then puts the
logs somewhere Google can find, you have a record that can be Googled. This
only happens for the public if somebody cares.

~~~
scaryclam
You actually can't do this with slack and be compliant with their TOS
([https://slack.com/terms-of-service/api](https://slack.com/terms-of-
service/api)):

"Functionality. You may not use the Slack API to replicate or compete with
core products or services offered by Slack. You acknowledge and agree that
Slack has or may in the future offer products or services that are similar to
your Application, and nothing will prevent Slack from doing so;"

So any communities doing this can get their community shut down by slack at
any time.

------
hluska
This is a well reasoned post, so my first reaction is to agree with you. But,
then I remember two things. First, I largely learned to program because of
some (extremely patient) people on IRC. IRC is similar to Slack in that it
theoretically silos away questions and answers and prevents future
discoverability. And second, despite all these years of conversations that
were held on IRC, I can still find answers to any question imaginable on
Google.

In retrospect, I think that Slack (or IRC) might actually be a great way to
disseminate information from developers to highly technical people. And, I
think that many of these first generation learners blog about what they
learned or go to answer questions on other services (ie - StackOverflow).

But, I'm a sample of one and have absolutely no proof of any of this...:)

------
siddhant
I don't like this trend either. What I particularly don't like is that to be
signed in into multiple Slack communities, I need to add them to the Slack
desktop app. And the more apps I have, the worse the desktop app seems to
perform.

I wish the developer communities would realize that IRC has been around for
years and performs much much better than Slack.

~~~
markatkinson
Discord seems to be a more elegant solution than Slack tbh, and I happen to be
on several developer servers. The web app/desktop app/mobile app all function
brilliantly.

~~~
codefined
The issue I have with Discord is the lack of threads. When you're helping
multiple people at once threads can help distinguish who you're talking to. Or
when you have multiple conversations happening at once it stops things getting
confusing.

~~~
markatkinson
wholeheartedly agree with this. The counter on the top an be annoying as it
just aggregates all private chats.

------
detaro
Not a fan. Annoying to access, limited history, ...

Can be improved with having external logs and/or a strong culture of moving
things to external documentation, you can set up open gateways for joining,
..., but few Slack-based communities bother.

------
TomK32
Over the years I've seen projects using stackoverflow to answer dev/user
questions and just recently I started using
[http://stimulusjs.org/](http://stimulusjs.org/) which runs a discourse
installation for their users. Which I like a lot because it discourse is
fixing a lot of the problems stackoverflow has while not being a chaotic chat
like slack.

I like my information well-ordered, grouped, focused and easy to search. Slack
is a waterfall I just can't stand. (plus the emojis, am I too old for those?)

------
auscompgeek
If we're talking about an open-source project dev community, I honestly think
there are better tools out there these days.

There are two main problems I have with Slack communities: the message limit,
and having to create yet another account. Being able to search for a question
that may have already been asked is great, and the need for more accounts is a
bit of a turnoff too.

Gitter was specifically built with open-source projects in mind, which is
great. However, once a project becomes large enough, having a single channel
is probably not conducive to productivity.

Lately I've started seeing open-source communities use Discord, which seems
rather interesting.

Of course, there are also the projects out there that use Matrix and have IRC
and Gitter bridges.

Having said all this, I'm also a part of some non-project-based Slack dev
communities. I can definitely see the appeal to these; a lot of people already
use Slack for work, after all.

~~~
jayflux
Gitter’s search is also terrible and barely existent. I think this is to do
with the way they store logs after a month.

------
bryanlarsen
I suggest Zulip as an alternative. Two main advantages:

\- free & open source.

\- threads are google-able and linkable.

------
DanHulton
I see what you're saying, and I agree with all your points, but there are
positive points as well:

1) When you need low-latency help, i.e. where you need to have a conversation
about your problem, a real-time communications medium is ideal.

2) They _do_ tend to lean towards becoming _communities_ , and communities are
very good at driving engagement within that community. I've joined a few Slack
communities and become a contributing member, whereas I experimented with
early Stack Overflow and haven't really engaged with it since.

Honestly, I think they tend to lead to _stronger_ communities, since you have
to join and participate even a bit to get your answer out of it. With GG/SO,
you can just pop in, read your bit, and move on, having never contributed.

------
Raphmedia
I've become a regular on Symfony's (PHP framework). It works really great for
creating a sense of community. Slack is great to talk with each others and
split concerns between channels. The thread feature is great at keeping the
main channels from getting clogged.

Now the main issue is that those Slack workspace are always on free tier. The
only other options would be to charge the users as it's a fixed price per
users and paying $8/users/month is impossible for open source projects.

Since those are on the free tier, message history is lost. You cannot leverage
Slack's great search engine and community support gets lost. On a regular
forum, you could search for previous questions. On Slack, you cannot.

------
ergo14
I would rather have the projects advocate IRC with some nice frontend, I get
there are some benefits of slack for developers, but this is thin ice - unless
the projects are prepared to pay for channels that have thousands of users.

------
always_good
They are great because they create actual communities.

Chat is ephemeral. If you have a question that's not on StackOverflow, then
you can just ask people in chat. It's even better for deeper questions because
you can have a conversation.

Not every social vessel we have in the world needs to become an archived
knowledgebase. And one of the reasons StackOverflow exists is because it's so
hard to mine Q&A from even more static mediums like forums much less
chatrooms.

------
ken
I love that Slack exists. I don't see any need to use it myself. It provides a
great honeypot for the Eternal September influx. IRC is (to steal Metacity's
slogan) like Cheerios.

(Yes, I used Slack for a while, at a company I worked for. I found it
technically unimpressive, and the UI seems to be designed primarily to
encourage every channel to descend into emoji and memes, and to maximize
distraction.)

I find the lack of logging/search on IRC to be a feature. I think people are
more open in a community when they know they're not going to be hyper-analyzed
by strangers on the internet in the distant future. There do exist IRC
loggers, but I think most of the channels I frequent don't allow them.

------
hellofunk
Overall, they are good simply because you do often get quick real-time help,
like Irc but with more people.

------
shylendar
I find spectrum.chat working better for communities when compared to slack.
Somehow slack adds too much noise to your "work communication"

And I hate when people tag the whole channel for some silly reasons(most
communities disable this option...but still)

------
Jedi72
I agree with all the other negative comments here plus one more - Slack just
isn't very good software, it frequently bugs out or outright crashes and is
rediculously slow.

------
mistrial9
misc thoughts -- if the service is free, then you are the product...
Commercial companies can change their terms at will, and are long-term
motivated towards vendor lock-in ... FOSS producers need FOSS IRC channels..
and lastly, crowds move by both fashion and fiat. Efforts may not be
immediately returned, but over the longer term this can change quite a bit.

------
blairanderson
I agree. the information they're sharing would better serve those communities
by being public.

Its a short-sighted solution.

------
pier25
I think steering questions to a chat is a terrible idea. There is no
collective learning anymore.

------
jaboutboul
It sucks. Bring back IRC now!

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
IRC never went away and is alive and well, and still both useful and fun.

~~~
curioussavage
I keep hearing that and then I go to an irc room and ask a question and sit...
and sit some more... I think I’m at 5 times in a row now that no one even
answered. I am done wasting my time there. Irc might not be totally dead but
despite all the denial it’s definitely on its way out. And good riddance.

~~~
orb_yt
Was this on freenode? What channel?

------
schlotzisk
[https://spectrum.chat](https://spectrum.chat) tries to solve the problem of
giant Slack communities. It gained a lot of popularity in the last year + it's
open source, if that is something you care about.

