8 ms·

reminds me of that one time a genius at IBM created an `ibm-global-announcements` channel and force-invited 200'000 people in it, and then some guy `@channel`d

reminds me of that one time a genius at IBM created an `ibm-global-announcements` channel and force-invited 200'000 people in it, and then some guy `@channel`d and all ibm's slack workspaces were down for 30 minutes https://status.slack.com/ibm/2018-03/f01d4c22cd953dd7 https://status.slack.com/ibm/2018-03/f01d4c22cd953dd7 https://i.imgur.com/Rk6Kdgp.png https://i.imgur.com/Rk6Kdgp.png EDIT: also that channel made using slack impossible for mac book air users, they had around 80% cpu usage for slack. so basically entire marketing and PM part was unable to work that day. developes machines were wasting around 20% on slack. after people started complaining in that channel, posting in it was limited to admins only, but they didn't lock commenting. so, for approx 6 hours all of IBM was posting memes in ＴＨＥＴＨＲＥＡＤ as we dubbed it, and @mentioning the genius who created that channel. next day the channel was nuked, not even an archive preserved. some guy calculated that the entire affair, considering electricity prices, a 20% decrease in developers productivity, and so on resulted in IBM loosing several millions with that stunt fun times p.s. shout out to Martinj for that spicy jeff-coffee-mug meme

freehunter 7y ago
There should be a way to turn off @here and @channel. It should be a user-level setting, a channel-level setting, and an organization-level setting. Even if my org or channel doesn't opt out, I should be able to.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Some of this you can already do. Users can opt out of @here and @channel for any given channel. I know that orgs can restrict usage of @everyone, I assume they can do the same for @here/@channel but I'm not sure.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- foobarian 7y ago
  I hate that it can't be controlled per channel. There are many channels where it's useful and desirable, so our org doesn't disable it globally. This creates situations where new people @here and @channel not knowing any better, which leads to hurt feelings all around.
- twoquestions 7y ago
  I know you can in Discord, I'd be shocked if Slack doesn't let you do that. checks Settings Yes, you can mute a channel and suppress @everyone and @here if you want. Still friggin nuts that a chat service can bring a modern machine to it's knees.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    Ah I knew you could mute it but muting a channel does not suppress @here. I did more exploring and found it's a multi-step process to suppress @here vs muting, but it is indeed possible. Learn something new every day.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  Or at least a way to force users to pay a fee whenever they use those features.
  - samstave 7y ago
    It would be interesting to have a karma function whereby it was based on your use of @channel or @everyone - or something similar to how HN used to require 500 karma to be able to downvote...
- fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  People at my company use @channel constantly for the most trivial of things its a major pet peeve for me
  - freehunter 7y ago
    My work has a 1000+ person channel for ad-hoc support questions that aren't critical and could be answered by anyone. If it's critical, our support team has an SLA, but Slack doesn't. There was one specific person who would ask a question, expect an immediate response, and if they didn't get the response they would @here. They were instructed not to do that because it pings over 1000 people, so the next time they asked twice in an hour and when they didn't get a response they said "I hate to do this but I really need a response @here". They were kicked from the channel. Really unfortunate since it's a very useful channel to be in, but @here and @channel is just so disruptive in big channels.
- Splines 7y ago
  It should just be turned off for large channels. Pop an error message and direct users who need it to a support article, if they follow up real support people then see how many people complain.
draw_down 7y ago
Yeah, that sounds like the IBM I hear about sometimes. Bunch of real world-beaters over there.
mac_attack18 7y ago
I remember that day fun times. I just shut off Slack and got back to work was nice not being pinged constantly.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Distributed Denial Of...Slack?
amelius 7y ago
> a genius at IBM Are you saying it is the user's fault where it is clearly Slack's inadequate implementation that is the problem?
- valerij 7y ago
  i stand by my opinion that "lets create one chat room and invite hundreds of thousands of people into it" is a bad idea regardless of what technology implements the chat room
  - Medicalidiot 7y ago
    I respect your opinion, because even if an application could handle 200k users at once was able to be run on a MBP without serious issue, it's still gauche to forcibly invite 200k people in your company to a chat.
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      Slack is designed for business chat, and many businesses have thousands or more employees. Slack should be able to handle any features it provides, and @everyone is a feature. I don't know how they've implemented things or what the specific issue is, but it should at least have blocks in place that prevent stupid things. Maybe channel sizes should be limited to 1000 people or whatever their testing shows it can handle. Idk. Software designed for large numbers of people shouldn't go down because one of those people does something stupid.
  - iamnotacrook 7y ago
    If you want to tell everyone in your company something, you could email them I guess. Is it the fact that it's a "chat room" which means you expect it not to work? What's best, here? SMS? Email? Putting something on the website and making everyone check the website once a day at noon? Tell one in ten people and get them to "pass it on"?
    - kortilla 7y ago
skribbj 7y ago
I'm more surprised that the IBM server has 200k users?
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia, IBM has 380k employees. Not that surprising that half of the use the company Slack.
geggam 7y ago
IRC works when you do that still :)
llamataboot 7y ago
I still hate that anyone can add anyone to a channel - it's not an "invite", it's just global "add to room" privileges. In general I find Slack not very concerned with your own ability to control your experience (no ignore user feature, can be added to rooms, can be added to rooms that then get pinged with @channel and your notifications start blowing up, etc). This may be 'expected' in a small company where of course everyone should talk to everyone, but for larger companies and the plethora of various open-source or interest-based communities now using Slack, it's not so good.
- Bahamut 7y ago
  Even worse than the channel mechanic is the thread mechanic - anyone can turn your comment to a thread, and you cannot mute threads by default. Even worse, updates to threads suppress channel unread notifications, causing you to miss updates. Manually having to follow threads and unfollow threads is a nightmare compared to the one time configure experience of channels, especially since you cannot just mute all threads, and is easily the worst part of Slack to me.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
OT, but: > 200'000 Interesting. Why an apostrophe?
- valerij 7y ago
  i've picked up this kind of thousand separation at some point to make large numbers scannable. c.f. 1600000000 1'600'000'000 separating at 10³ is due to counting customs of the region i live in. using an apostrophe `U+0027` appears to be the least wrong use of possible glyphs accessible on my keyboard layout also c++14 does it this way
  - jgtrosh 7y ago
    It's common practice to use commas for this in anglophone countries, but it collisions with french decimal separator; so it's a reasonable choice.
nurettin 7y ago
This is not old news. There is still an IBM slack channel called #general with 30k+ people in it. And people regularly arrive in it to say "hi". No useful information is shared.

freehunter 7y ago

There should be a way to turn off @here and @channel. It should be a user-level setting, a channel-level setting, and an organization-level setting. Even if my org or channel doesn't opt out, I should be able to.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Some of this you can already do. Users can opt out of @here and @channel for any given channel. I know that orgs can restrict usage of @everyone, I assume they can do the same for @here/@channel but I'm not sure.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
foobarian 7y ago
I hate that it can't be controlled per channel. There are many channels where it's useful and desirable, so our org doesn't disable it globally. This creates situations where new people @here and @channel not knowing any better, which leads to hurt feelings all around.
twoquestions 7y ago
I know you can in Discord, I'd be shocked if Slack doesn't let you do that. checks Settings Yes, you can mute a channel and suppress @everyone and @here if you want. Still friggin nuts that a chat service can bring a modern machine to it's knees.
- freehunter 7y ago
  Ah I knew you could mute it but muting a channel does not suppress @here. I did more exploring and found it's a multi-step process to suppress @here vs muting, but it is indeed possible. Learn something new every day.
ravenstine 7y ago
Or at least a way to force users to pay a fee whenever they use those features.
- samstave 7y ago
  It would be interesting to have a karma function whereby it was based on your use of @channel or @everyone - or something similar to how HN used to require 500 karma to be able to downvote...
fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
People at my company use @channel constantly for the most trivial of things its a major pet peeve for me
- freehunter 7y ago
  My work has a 1000+ person channel for ad-hoc support questions that aren't critical and could be answered by anyone. If it's critical, our support team has an SLA, but Slack doesn't. There was one specific person who would ask a question, expect an immediate response, and if they didn't get the response they would @here. They were instructed not to do that because it pings over 1000 people, so the next time they asked twice in an hour and when they didn't get a response they said "I hate to do this but I really need a response @here". They were kicked from the channel. Really unfortunate since it's a very useful channel to be in, but @here and @channel is just so disruptive in big channels.
Splines 7y ago
It should just be turned off for large channels. Pop an error message and direct users who need it to a support article, if they follow up real support people then see how many people complain.

draw_down 7y ago

Yeah, that sounds like the IBM I hear about sometimes. Bunch of real world-beaters over there.

mac_attack18 7y ago

I remember that day fun times. I just shut off Slack and got back to work was nice not being pinged constantly.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Distributed Denial Of...Slack?

amelius 7y ago

> a genius at IBM Are you saying it is the user's fault where it is clearly Slack's inadequate implementation that is the problem?

valerij 7y ago
i stand by my opinion that "lets create one chat room and invite hundreds of thousands of people into it" is a bad idea regardless of what technology implements the chat room
- Medicalidiot 7y ago
  I respect your opinion, because even if an application could handle 200k users at once was able to be run on a MBP without serious issue, it's still gauche to forcibly invite 200k people in your company to a chat.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Slack is designed for business chat, and many businesses have thousands or more employees. Slack should be able to handle any features it provides, and @everyone is a feature. I don't know how they've implemented things or what the specific issue is, but it should at least have blocks in place that prevent stupid things. Maybe channel sizes should be limited to 1000 people or whatever their testing shows it can handle. Idk. Software designed for large numbers of people shouldn't go down because one of those people does something stupid.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  If you want to tell everyone in your company something, you could email them I guess. Is it the fact that it's a "chat room" which means you expect it not to work? What's best, here? SMS? Email? Putting something on the website and making everyone check the website once a day at noon? Tell one in ten people and get them to "pass it on"?
  - kortilla 7y ago

skribbj 7y ago

I'm more surprised that the IBM server has 200k users?

0xffff2 7y ago
According to Wikipedia, IBM has 380k employees. Not that surprising that half of the use the company Slack.

geggam 7y ago

IRC works when you do that still :)

llamataboot 7y ago

I still hate that anyone can add anyone to a channel - it's not an "invite", it's just global "add to room" privileges. In general I find Slack not very concerned with your own ability to control your experience (no ignore user feature, can be added to rooms, can be added to rooms that then get pinged with @channel and your notifications start blowing up, etc). This may be 'expected' in a small company where of course everyone should talk to everyone, but for larger companies and the plethora of various open-source or interest-based communities now using Slack, it's not so good.

Bahamut 7y ago
Even worse than the channel mechanic is the thread mechanic - anyone can turn your comment to a thread, and you cannot mute threads by default. Even worse, updates to threads suppress channel unread notifications, causing you to miss updates. Manually having to follow threads and unfollow threads is a nightmare compared to the one time configure experience of channels, especially since you cannot just mute all threads, and is easily the worst part of Slack to me.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

OT, but: > 200'000 Interesting. Why an apostrophe?

valerij 7y ago
i've picked up this kind of thousand separation at some point to make large numbers scannable. c.f. 1600000000 1'600'000'000 separating at 10³ is due to counting customs of the region i live in. using an apostrophe `U+0027` appears to be the least wrong use of possible glyphs accessible on my keyboard layout also c++14 does it this way
- jgtrosh 7y ago
  It's common practice to use commas for this in anglophone countries, but it collisions with french decimal separator; so it's a reasonable choice.

nurettin 7y ago

This is not old news. There is still an IBM slack channel called #general with 30k+ people in it. And people regularly arrive in it to say "hi". No useful information is shared.