Yeah, I think the real solution here is: let's make chat permanently archived and searchable. I find it more useful searching through Slack for old conversations around a topic than searching Confluence for the same.

But aren't these both pretty terrible tools or storing information?

Slack is an attempt at legitimizing and organizing stream-of-consciousness. It has short feedback loops and therefore cannot communicate deep research, novel concepts, nor well-cited evidence.

This is the wrong way to bring the tools of the consumer to the enterprise. Nobody asked for this chat tool - Slack is something sold to somebody who doesn't want to worry about something, not somebody who wants to do something well with low attrition.

Usually - but the cases where this is both well implemented and stores infinite history, or even very long history, is vanishingly rare.

Sounds like people are trying to asymptotically approach email functionality without actually using email. I do agree that chat stuff has a place, but it seems like the new functionality is just being copy-and-pasted from current email functionality.