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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I don't really if all chat messages disappear. It's chat. It's ephemeral. No value to me beyond sentimental.
I don't think that's really the case here though. Developer communities chat about bugs, how they've solved them, future project plans, etc etc etc. It's not always just idle chat. It's a shame to lose that.
May be, but I also don't use any projects that have you searching chat logs (even if they exist) for future roadmap information, for example.
I think the point of log history search is fair but overrated.
It's easy to point out the feature, but I'm not convinced that regular chat search is part of anybody's centerpiece day-to-day bug-hunting strategy even on platforms with chat history.
Also, some things are better off on the forum. For example, Elm has a Slack and a forum. If you need to assume that all project discussion happens on Slack to find weaknesses in Slack, then I don't find those very compelling. It's just forum vs chatroom discussion and of course there are differences, just like how chat history doesn't make a chatroom competitive with a forum.
I know it looks like I'm going out of my way to "defend Slack" in the comments section here, but I think that Slack vs IRC arguments are the perfect example of how many developers are clueless about UX and things the end-user cares about. I just responded someone who couldn't think of a single reason someone would use Slack beyond "hipsterism" whatever that means (btw, I thought hipsters liked old stuff like vinyl records and Polaroids). It's something I see as a big problem in our field along with the stereotype of how developers cannot design products (not just visually) -- these arguments tends to validate those stereotypes.
The problem is that many of these communities (and communities in general) are using systems like Slack for content that isn't ephemeral. Sure, use something like this to talk about the weather, what you're having for dinner or other things no one cares about in the long run.
But if you're talking about bugs, feature requests, future plans for the project, tech support... then use a proper forum or other more permanent solution, since otherwise tons of useful information just vanishes into the ether, especially with tools like Slack which have an actual message limit.
Still, they're not the only ones. Feels like almost everyone nowadays has forgotten about the value of having information stored for the long term. See the same thing with gaming communities on Discord too.
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?