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Oddly, I find the search in Slack, Teams, and Discord to be so horrible I don’t create any “knowledge there.” It’s like trying to write a paper on the telephone

by prepend 28d ago

Oddly, I find the search in Slack, Teams, and Discord to be so horrible I don’t create any “knowledge there.” It’s like trying to write a paper on the telephone. Anyone putting long form stuff into an IM system is taking the way of pain.

chrisweekly 28d ago
(Replying to parent and GP) I wasn't suggesting an IM system should be the source of truth for long-form documentation. But searching Slack works better than searching email you weren't cc'd on. Virtually anything is better than email for many essential aspects of collaboration. Want to add someone to the mailing list and loop them in? How many prior emails will you forward to them? Someone replies to one of several points in an email, someone else wants to address a different point, and there are a mix of habits and patterns for whether / how much / where to quote or include the previous messages in a response.... vs adding someone to a channel where they can review the conversation history, and some combination of threads and links to additional channels or external resources can adequately support whatever direction(s) the conversation takes. In any case, it's the wrong tool for the job in so many ways, so much of the time. Hence my recommendation to keep emails to 5 sentences, and to prefer communication tools that properly support multiuser collaboration.
- john_strinlai 28d ago
  we have polar opposite opinions on email and slack/teams/discord! im not sure i am even understanding the issues you brought up about email correctly. may i ask what age bracket or generation you are? only if you're comfortable sharing, of course. im in my 60s. and im curious if our difference of opinion here is a product of what technologies were/are available during the start & prime of our careers. i very well might be in stubborn old man mode subconciously.
  - chrisweekly 28d ago
    Thanks for considering possible reasons for disagreement. I'd like to understand it, too. FWIW, I'm about to turn 52. Been working in tech since the late 1990s. Remote more than not. Email is great for certain specific things. But for multiuser async collaboration in the workplace, surely you've encountered problems like I have, no? Email conversations -- especially if they're long and/or include a lengthy recipient list -- are inherently prone to critical failure, completely decohering as _both_ the recipient list(s) _and_ the topic(s) under discussion can fragment from the very first of N replies, making it impossible to resolve anything conclusively or to know what's been communicated to whom.
- prepend 28d ago
  I use a git-generated static site that has good search, so if people want to find stuff before asking that’s the go-to. Otherwise, I can search email quite effectively. And oddly, its one of the few things Office Copilot is goos at. I don’t email is a collaboration tool. It’s an information sharing tool and maybe workflow. Just today I had to email out to like 20 people a data call with a couple paragraphs of instruction. It’s much better than Slack for this. And I can search and find my email and their responses for all of eternity (I’ve got every email going back 20+ years instantly searchable in outlook, good luck finding a slack message from a month ago much less a decade).
  - chrisweekly 28d ago
    > "I don’t email is a collaboration tool" That's almost the entirety of my point. Sure, email works well for simple, unidirectional / broadcast comms. But for async collaboration involving multiple recipients and any kind of back and forth, it's inherently problematic.

by prepend 28d ago

chrisweekly 28d ago

(Replying to parent and GP) I wasn't suggesting an IM system should be the source of truth for long-form documentation. But searching Slack works better than searching email you weren't cc'd on. Virtually anything is better than email for many essential aspects of collaboration. Want to add someone to the mailing list and loop them in? How many prior emails will you forward to them? Someone replies to one of several points in an email, someone else wants to address a different point, and there are a mix of habits and patterns for whether / how much / where to quote or include the previous messages in a response.... vs adding someone to a channel where they can review the conversation history, and some combination of threads and links to additional channels or external resources can adequately support whatever direction(s) the conversation takes. In any case, it's the wrong tool for the job in so many ways, so much of the time. Hence my recommendation to keep emails to 5 sentences, and to prefer communication tools that properly support multiuser collaboration.

john_strinlai 28d ago
we have polar opposite opinions on email and slack/teams/discord! im not sure i am even understanding the issues you brought up about email correctly. may i ask what age bracket or generation you are? only if you're comfortable sharing, of course. im in my 60s. and im curious if our difference of opinion here is a product of what technologies were/are available during the start & prime of our careers. i very well might be in stubborn old man mode subconciously.
- chrisweekly 28d ago
  Thanks for considering possible reasons for disagreement. I'd like to understand it, too. FWIW, I'm about to turn 52. Been working in tech since the late 1990s. Remote more than not. Email is great for certain specific things. But for multiuser async collaboration in the workplace, surely you've encountered problems like I have, no? Email conversations -- especially if they're long and/or include a lengthy recipient list -- are inherently prone to critical failure, completely decohering as _both_ the recipient list(s) _and_ the topic(s) under discussion can fragment from the very first of N replies, making it impossible to resolve anything conclusively or to know what's been communicated to whom.
prepend 28d ago
I use a git-generated static site that has good search, so if people want to find stuff before asking that’s the go-to. Otherwise, I can search email quite effectively. And oddly, its one of the few things Office Copilot is goos at. I don’t email is a collaboration tool. It’s an information sharing tool and maybe workflow. Just today I had to email out to like 20 people a data call with a couple paragraphs of instruction. It’s much better than Slack for this. And I can search and find my email and their responses for all of eternity (I’ve got every email going back 20+ years instantly searchable in outlook, good luck finding a slack message from a month ago much less a decade).
- chrisweekly 28d ago
  > "I don’t email is a collaboration tool" That's almost the entirety of my point. Sure, email works well for simple, unidirectional / broadcast comms. But for async collaboration involving multiple recipients and any kind of back and forth, it's inherently problematic.