On 2015-07-13 07:46, Allan Irving wrote: > Beside the let's replace the mailing discussion, and the flame war than ensued, I find it interesting how you dismiss the value of slow long term conversation vs immediacy.
> I proposed Slack due to the immediacy and speed at which messages can be responded to. Not everyone checks their emails every five minutes and from my experience, people tend to overlook emails until which point as they can be bothered to reply to them. This show exactly the difference between email and IM. IM is great when you need the answer now. If you're not a friend and you're not paying me, I have no incentive to stop what I'm doing to answer now. On the other hand, I don't mind spending some time when it is convenient for me to participate in more general discussions with "strangers". > - Slack is multiplatform and integrates with everything. So does email. However, Slack is a quicker way to communicate - email is not. Slack allows for more discussion / in depth / a proper conversation. Email really does not create conversations in the same way. I disagree... IM, "instant" messaging (which slack is), allows fast discussion which promotes quick thinking, witty, answers, while email promotes slow, researched thinking, which to me is more in-depth. > Equally, Slack allows multi channels much like signing up to different mailing lists but does this more intuitively and it’s easier as opposed to signing up and verifying. Equally, younger generations do not use mailing lists as much as others. This is why many projects such as London Startups use a Facebook group - and not a mailing list. We tend to be more interested in our identity and personal value when we are young, and tend to move towards in-depth discussions focus on subject matter rather than participant as we age and mature. Younger generations still use usenet and mailing list, lots of young academic use both channel heavily. For example, 80% of discussions on /r/sysadmin are about "how stupid l'users are" or "how management just doesn't understand it", while discussion on this list are about professionalization, ethics, tools, how to stir one's career etc.. > - Slack allows for controlling who does and doesn’t join a channel and also allows people to direct each other, whereas with email you have to email them personally as opposed to a list which many may not want to do feeling they are encroaching on someone’s personal email. You're conflating group vs private communication. Both exists in emails and slack. There's no feeling of encroaching on anybody's private space when emailing email lists. If anything, private messaging in slack is more intrusive than email because it makes my phone beep at me. > > - Email certainly does not have the same flow that Slack or IRC can produce in that it is not as fast. You can easily see what someone else has said before you reply in one whereas sending this email now, by the time I’ve sent it likely another reply has already been made. Agreed sync vs async discussion. Both have their place, one isn't better than the other. > - Slack allows you to search in one place. Unless you have filtering rules - you’re searching your whole inbox or reading through every message to find what you want. Some of us get so many emails and archive them so this is not as effective when searching your mailbox. Use a better email client!! Or use the mailing list archives. > - Slack has integrations. They work. Just like that. No clicking on links and what not. It’s quicker - it’s there and it works. There are so many True, but that works both way, slack's amazing to attach a graph of some trend I'm really worried about, on the other hand people can literally kill the usefulness of a channel because they feel that they have to express all their feelings by linking to images which show up automatically in slack and immediately destroy is usefulness. > - I do not agree that mailing lists are the best way to exchange information and do hold the belief that even IRC is far more effective. "More effective" in a specific context, when answers are needed immediately. Less effective for long term in-depth discussion. > - Slack is not open source but this is not the FSF. I do not see what difference that makes. Office 365 isn’t FOSS either but is still widely used. I only see this as a hindrance in terms of a FOSS debate, not in practical terms. It is important. Google Facebook etc.. have made sure IM are a bunch of isolated islands. That is really sad. Slack, Yammer etc... are doing exactly the same with IRC. You could argue that they could have just written an amazing IRC client and it'd be as good as current slack, but they wouldn't be able to monetize that. Federation and free participation, is like a multiplier for technology, but it does mean that somebody has to sponsor it (either a company giving technology away for free, or volunteers spending hours coding for the hope of notability). -- http://yves.zioup.com gpg: 4096R/32B0F416 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
