If someone told me "that is documented in the chat channel, just search", my response would be "ok. So it's not documented."

Even with the best organization (old content deleted), I don't want to wade through the conversations about it or all the other noise. Chat is temporal, the discussion about something like "should x be updated" is immediately irrelevant after the decision is made.

Eh, for the golden path, sure (say, having a service documented).

Slack search for <insert error name here> is high-value in historical context that's tough to replicate elsewhere. All at once, you learn if anyone's ever asked about the error before, and if so, see the conversation on resolution.

And email solves that? Or you are suggesting both chat and email do not solve the issue?

Yes, I'm saying neither chat nor email solve this issue.

Email is far worse, in fact, because:

* Everyone has a unique view

* Unless there are lots of cc-everyone style emails, you might not even have anything to find. (And cc-everyone sucks for 100 other reasons.)

* You can't find anything predating the start of your employment

The biggest issue with searching both chat and email is the absence of a result doesn't help: it's possible it was a private chat, or an email chain that you weren't a part of, but there's no way to tell.

(Side note: A very locked-down wiki isn't any better, but that's a conscious decision rather than default.)

Mailing lists exist.

Mailing lists are not heavily used outside of free software. In the corporate world I’ve never had a project provide a mailing list to be used for discussions.

Tools exist even if you don't use them.

Many companies use Outlook groups. Those are mailing lists.

Not in the sense that they’re searchable / archived on a listserv.

They are. Are you thinking of distribution lists?

Your point is valid, but not exactly correct. I don't want to know just what was decided, but why. Often I will come back to "should x be updated" again and again. Knowing the factors in the last decision is very important. More than once I've pushed to update x and had someone say "we can't for good reasons that I forget". Often I've spent weeks redoing the discussion before someone remembers/discovers why we can't do the update and we all go "whoa, I'm glad we didn't do that". Other times we discover/remember why we couldn't update and they are for reasons that no longer apply and so we do the update. Still other times we never discover any reason why we shouldn't update. Last sometimes we discover why we shouldn't have updated after it is too late and we have a mess to undo while backing out the update.

The important part is we know why a decision was made. Chat logs are not a good archive because there is too much to sort thought that isn't relevant. Better than nothing, but what is really needed is an effort to document why in a place the right people will find it when they need to know.

While I fully agree about the need to record reasoning, my approach is to summarize and put it in either wiki or a ticket. Future me doesn't want to read a long chat or email thread (whether it was one I was involved with or not), and I assume no one else does either.

That's just not true, Slack in particular is quite searchable. Anyway, weren't we talking about email, which is even less searchable?

Except you can only find stuff by spelunking with search, hoping you hit on the right set of keywords and then scrolling through a jumbled mess of hits. Wikis are organized and have navigation. Also being at a company that uses email and Slack, I will say it is very very rare that anyone actually uses Slack to search for conversations they weren't in. Email has other weaknesses of course but in general I agree with the point that Slack is actually worse in many use cases.

Mailing lists (aka Google Groups if you're on GSuite) allow retroactive access.

That said, none of my employers have ever made effective use of this. I don't think open communication is an instinct that most people have.

> Email isn't searchable by people who weren't on the threads

Chats have the same problem: they aren't searchable by people who weren't in them.

meanwhile https://lkml.org/

One cannot search channels one is not part of. Don't forget channels. Not everything happens on #general and #random.

Also, even if I am part of the channel, there is no way I can search and locate what I want without knowing the right keyword to search for. Sure, the information is all there, but that only ads to the frustration. Search interfaces in Slack & all are very limited / too broad.

>the chat system actually becomes sort of like a wiki

That sounds horrible and very fragile.

Absolutely, it is. It's still miles above every single corporate wiki I've tried to use. Your milage may vary.