So, for a bit of fun, and after joining yet another Slack with a big smile on my face, I had this visualisation in my head that another Slack is kind of just like another personās house to hang out in. And we can never have too many.
Of course, we can replace Slack with Discord, or any other chat tool, but these two are the most popular that people like to argue over.
Are you a Slack or a Discord kind of person? And why?
(Feel free to add more context to your answers in the comments).
Iām in a lot more Discords than I am Slacks, but that might be because I have a much heavier use of online communities for my hobbies than for business stuff outside my work Slack. Might depend on what peopleās entry points(?) to this sort of thing are? Might also be to do with how I rigorously shut down/ignore notifications for my work slack Out of Hours.
100%! I think thatās what I was trying to say earlier on Slack but you said it a lot more clearly. Iām in so many hobby groups . I also use both outside of work hours unless Iām on vacation or in a place I realllly donāt want to think about work at all.
Hot take: Slack is a terrible piece of trash and I hate it? I really donāt get why people love it so muchā¦ I donāt. It is an adequate chat client. Thatāsā¦ it. Whatās the big deal? It requires all kinds of rigmarole to join multiple servers (I get thatās part of the point for some people/some scenarios), it has free version limitations, its threading model is better than no threading but is actually not very good vs. the ideal, its read/unread status is problematic, it doesnāt manage status and user engagement well, and itās not suitable for actual community developmentā¦ IMHO. Is that enough of a āvoteā?
Yeah, thatās the thing: for whatever reason Slack is being used for community/communications around really interesting topics/programs/etc. I just hope that in time weāll be able to migrate away from it to a larger degree. And I suppose my resistance to it is in part my own tiny statement in favor of alternatives, but itās also true that I miss out on some things I would enjoy being part of as a result.
Why do you think Slack is used so much for community? The big reason to me seems to just be convenience, and maybe thatās enoughā¦
Also interesting that so far people donāt seem to necessarily be a āSlack personā or a āDiscord personā, the choice of platform seems more about what happens to be in use in the communities we are interested in. That makes total sense, but also raises questions about e.g. the marginalization of forums that weāve discussed elsewhere: Are forum platforms dead? I.e. why arenāt forums on topics of interest to people thriving as much or being created as much as they used to (arguably).
Of course it could just be as simple as the chat/synchronous communication vs. forum/asynchronous divide. Many people seem to have an intrinsic preference for chat/sync, or at the very least an inability to resist its immediacy, even if it doesnāt make them happy. Sorry, drifting OT here. Iāll take it back to the other thread for anything further.
It might be because Iām so used to Slack for work and other community forums, but I find it much easier to use. I recently joined a Discord channel and find it very overwhelming.
I think a big part is that itās free and that itās āprofessionalā, so as ātech peopleā who are āprofessionalā itās the default.
In my non tech world, itās WhatsApp, and urgh, I hate it.
I do think there is a key point to remember: that whilst people say they love chat more than things like forums, the actual people who show up in chat spaces is still relatively low. Probably under 10% for ones that have been around a while. This is just an educated guess, it would be interesting to see data around that.
I see Slack as a place āto doā things and a place to get answers quickly. Which probably works well at small scale, but almost every Slack I see that grows doesnāt handle the ongoing incoming questions well. It gets boring and repetitive.
Part of me thinks that questions should be discouraged and more sharing of ideas, requests for feedback, etc are more relevant.
I switched up the (for paid members) Rosieland Slack recently to focus more on being a social network and a collaborative space.
Discord is obscene state-sponsored spyware, and Slack is an atrocious monstrosity with serious user interface and general usability challenges.
Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is extremely inexpensive to get a Microsoft 365 license going for one admin (the basic starts at $6/mo.), and then you can invite anyone who has their own Microsoft Account (free) onto an externally-facing Teams Group. You get the full benefit of self-contained community management with the whole suite of Microsoft collaboration features (Office, SharePoint, even LinkedIn integration!) only at the cost of paying for a single license. Would definitely recommend for closed-communities.
I will say that in the corporate world, Slack isnāt particularly highly regarded. (Definitely it is a platform appreciated for DevOps and in Startups before Series C, which has been my experience with it.) Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams, specifically, are considered the gold standard, especially given how extensively it was developed and improved upon leading into the Pandemic. Its full-featured functionality, high-quality audio and video throughput, and extensive collaboration and community-building āteamsā features (which, in essence, are a really nice front-end for a robust and enterprise-grade SharePoint back-end), make it both affordable and you get the added bonus of getting the entire Office suite with it.
Strongly recommend to give it a try with a corporate customer.
. I also use both outside of work hours unless Iām on vacation or in a place I realllly donāt want to think about work at all.
Sorry, drifting OT here. Iāll take it back to the other thread for anything further. 