Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by hardwaresofton on Monday February 01, 2016 @12:57PM (#11013622)

@tptacek:

Slacks growing usefulness is predicated on the fact that people build bots for it.

It's not that IRC can be as good as slack -- IRC is NOT the same kind of thing as slack, they are different. IRC is a protocol, slack is not, slack is a product. My point is that the right product needs to be build AROUND IRC to make it viable/interesting.

From the previous comment, it seems like the features people are loving slack for are:

- Well designed interface

- File sharing

- Inviting/sharing channels with people

- Functionality provided by bots

Is that incorrect? I'm sure that list is incomplete, is there anything very significant I left off?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by md224 on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:17PM (#11013842)

Please reply to posts directly for the sake of keeping the thread tidy. If you don't see a reply link for a post, click the timestamp (e.g. "17 minutes ago") to go to the permalink view for a given comment, where a reply box will be available.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by hardwaresofton on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:21PM (#11013885)

Thanks -- reply button didn't show up, wasn't sure why, didn't know about this trick to leave comments.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by md224 on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:23PM (#11013920)

No worries... I'm not sure exactly why the reply button is hidden when this "trick" allows you to reply regardless. HN mods might be able to shed more light on this.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by igravious on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:21PM (#11013896)

That's a neat trick, and not one that I knew about. I would also like to know why the reply button doesn't appear at times -- I presumed some kind of rate-limiting.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by ufo on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:19PM (#11013865)

Is there a reason why the replay button doesn't appear sometimes? I always wondered about that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by jat850 on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:23PM (#11013913)

To you and the others curious about why the reply button doesn't show up, there is a buffer period after a reply appears before you can reply to it, to mitigate flame wars and such. It's usually a few minutes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by hardwaresofton on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:24PM (#11013931)

Uhhh does that mean we just found a bug?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by edanm on Monday February 01, 2016 @02:26PM (#11014610)

If you mean the fact that you can circumvent this, then I'm not sure. It's possibly intentionally left in so that more experienced users have a way around that limitation.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by justincormack on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:19PM (#11013864)

- offline mode integrated - search - usable mobile clients - inline images - notification control - usable interface for private and group chats - access control and authentication integrated

Probably more too.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by hardwaresofton on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:23PM (#11013918)

But do any of those features feel like they couldn't be built into a good product built around IRC?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects by justincormack on Monday February 01, 2016 @02:01PM (#11014332)

Anything can be built but irc has huge fragmentation of clients, so dev focus is thinly spread, developers have not apparently been interested in changing the ux for decades, and most of the (small number, despite what this article says) users like it how it is.

[ Parent | on HN ]