Email is incredible =================== Every now and then we have to go through the same tired rigamarole of somebody claiming to have "revolutionized" communications. Typically, this revolution involves breaking workflows and introducing some new, unwanted (usually Electron-powered) app that "solves" all of the "problems" that you're currently having with communications. I'm not going to say that people don't have problems with communications solutions. We most assuredly do. However, those problems were themselves introduced by the previous attempt to "revolutionize" communications with shitty apps and proprietary protocols. Each iteration is self-defeating because they're trying to fix the problem using the same broken and incorrect ideas that caused the issues in the first place. Slack is an excellent example of this. I have to use Slack in my dayjob, and it's the bane of my existence. I dread the inevitable chime of woodblocks when individuals start reaching out to me to ask me a question which very clearly should not be asked in an IM format. Often, people even commit the sin of starting out with a greeting as a single message (like "Hi!" or "How's it going?"), a process which breaks my focus and leaves me staring at Slack until they finally decide to get to the point. Poor chat etiquette aside, Slack is simply a bad tool for large-scale collaboration. Threads, in particular, are a good idea in theory but are executed absolutely abysmally. A user might start a thread to segregate out a conversation about a longer-running issue, but that's as far as one can go. One can't reply to individual messages in the thread, nor start subthreads. This means that Slack conversations remain pretty much as single-threaded as the brains of those who designed this godawful interaction. We got it right, once --------------------- A long time ago, we had a glorious combination of things: - Email for long-form, asynchronous conversations - IRC for quick queries and collaboration in real-time - VOIP solutions like Mumble for chats - Video conferencing This separation of concerns made it clear exactly what form a conversation was going to take and properly set expectations for outcomes. If someone wrote to you on IRC, you could be fairly sure that the query was going to be brief and simple, with no wider implication or need to reference back to it. If someone wrote you an email, there was a greater expectation of permanence and back-referencing, as well as a signal that the conversation required greater thought and attention. Apps like Slack and Teams which aim to abolish the need for email do so poorly, in large part because they remove this certainty. A Slack conversation, these days, can be just as business-critical as an email thread. However, it's impossible to find things most of the time due to poor search facilities and the chaos of the always-online workspace. The fact that we now blend the synchronous and the asynchronous without a single thought for what defines each means that we have created for ourselves a situation where we aren't able to do either efficiently. Slack and Teams are not content to just consume the place of IRC and email, either. They have to be everything: IRC, email, VOIP, video conferencing, collaboration space... but this approach leaves one very much at the mercy of Slack's product design and willingness to maintain some sort of standard approach. Follow the thread ----------------- For long, complex discussions Slack is utterly unusable. Realistically, one must create a channel for each individual discussion (or "project") in order to have any hope at all of organizing and finding information. However, this approach is cumbersome and leads to people getting very lost in the platform. Where was that message you saw a while back about this topic? It could be in any one of these 15 channels, and Slack seach isn't going to help you. Similarly, you have no say in how channels are organized unless you yourself create all of the channels. With email, however, everyone can have their own cataloguing system that works for them. They can use folders or tags to put things in places that make sense, and everyone's catalogue may be different. This approach is timeless, simple, and correct. If I think that the conversation should fall under "Engineering", but you think it should fall under "Development", that's fine. There's not a jot of conflict in that as we're not deciding for one another. But the most crucial and useful feature of email (specifically plain text email) is thread management. If you've ever participated in a mailing list or used Usenet, you know just how well email threading works as a format. If I send an email, anyone can start a thread on that message by replying to it and they can even edit it in-place to focus their response on specific parts of the message. For example: ``` Hi everyone, I had a thought about email. I think it's pretty neat and we should start using it more. Some people may still be married to Slack, but let's face it: nobody can find anything and since we introduced it we've seen a massive drop in productivity. ``` ``` Hi John, > I had a thought about email. I think it's pretty neat and we should > start using it more. Fully agree. > since we introduced it we've seen a massive drop in productivity I don't necessarily disagree with you, but do you have any metrics on this? I'd be interested in presenting them to my HOD. ``` Threads can grow and change, and humans are always responsible for editing the messages to keep what context is necessary. All messages are displayed as a series of branches off the original post, so it's easy to see the different trains of discussion and follow them to their conclusion. Not only is email vastly superior for threading and maintaining communications at scale, it's also (for the most part) entirely standardized. The IMAP, POP, SMTP, and soon JMAP protocols are well-understood and are implemented by a range of different software. Formats such as EML and MBOX are similarly well-understood and portable, unlike Slack's proprietary database. You want to migrate from Slack to another tool? You're limited to tools that can manage import from Slack, then. You want to move to a new email provider? Export some MBOXes. Let's not forget IRC -------------------- IRC is email's natural companion. While people seem to be moving to other solutions such as Matrix and Discord these days, I really don't see how they're improving things for anyone. IRC is simple, standardized, and stays in its lane. There's no pretense to greater functionality with IRC, which means people can more easily make the decision of where the conversation should take place. IRC is amnesiac by default (although bouncers go some way to remedying this), and difficult to search. Therefore, IRC should be relied upon only for off-the-cuff discussions that are formalized in email, or for non-work-related chats and discussions that have no greater importance to the project or company. Slack workspaces will typically have a "General" or "Fun" channel for this purpose, but the fact that there is permanence to these channels means that some people slip up and have important conversations in these rooms knowing they'll be able (in theory) to reference back to them. Conclusion --- Slack and the like are plagues on productivity. Not just because they're a single bad solution to a variety of needs. Not just because the apps are heavy and poorly designed. The biggest problem Slack has created is cultural. They've removed the decision making process from communications, meaning there's no thought in what's being said or how it's being said. When you're thinking of starting a project in your company, an open source project, or even your own company, think hard about how you want people to think about communications. If they're important, people should weigh them with such importance and be willing to make decisions. -- ~sporiff .