Hard disagree back. Email has multiple contexts when I would say that short form is ideal and should be the default but at times a thoroughly long form email is needed. Or, honestly, you just need to create a document at this point. It could be a slide deck or word/markdown/excel/etc (depends on context) and this should be in the email. But email is key.

My experience is that people search subject lines, conversations, dates, and generally traverse historical conversations much better in email than in chat or a fully external application. They won’t search Slack, or try but can’t find the conversation. They won’t remember it’s on a wiki, you’ll constantly be redirecting them to the url. If the file is attached to an email, sometimes they’ll resurface it from a year+ ago. I find that’s way more common than someone referring to a chat from even a month ago. Chats are semi ephemeral. I’ve used both Teams and Slack and feel neither has really changed the game in terms of how the entire user base of an org use the system, enabling the historical reference points and moving it out of a ephemeral state, so email remains a stalwart for archival purposes and helps provide maximum context after the fact (people tend to elaborate on their choices more when writing an email).

I’ve found that a two-prong approach works best.

Detail in the email, expect people to read it or fail. And include a reference to a wiki or some more detailed version that can be collaborated on and extended.

So the email isn’t the primary source, the wiki is (really some markdown in git). But the email is the thing that people organize and find over time.

This probably differs a bit by your exact profession and circumstances. I could see devs and technical people (most of HN readers) to prefer and have success with this when operating with like minded peers. It doesn’t scale much outside that. If you work with people outside of tech/dev minded people, those who are not used to RTFM type info seeking, it’s going to be an uphill battle.

I think you may be right. Fortunately, I work with like 10k collaborators who are all science/tech oriented and it works quite well.

I wouldn’t want to work in an org where people can’t read email and want to talk to everyone instead.

I'm envious, although I think my experience is the rule and your's more of an exception. It might be more common on HN given the demo, but IRL, people mostly want to talk. Or even if they read email, they can't be bothered to search for things themselves. Makes me think of another long standing habit I have, I just ignore people. If they ask me something that has been answered and I know it's in an email somewhere, I ignore the question. If it's something they really need, they will go find it. Obviously this is very YMMV and I was able to start doing this after I reached a higher position/role, I've been a CFO for some time now and I still have certain people and audiences I will promptly answer any question even if I know it's been answered/documented.

>anything longer belongs somewhere better than email (Slack, wiki / knowledgebase, docs site)

wiki/kb or docs site, sure, depending what the topic is. but... slack? for your long-form communications?

please email me your long stuff, don't slack it to me. email is perfectly fine for longer text when longer text is required. (opinion also shaped over a long time in various roles at companies of various size)

Oddly, I find the search in Slack, Teams, and Discord to be so horrible I don’t create any “knowledge there.” It’s like trying to write a paper on the telephone.

Anyone putting long form stuff into an IM system is taking the way of pain.

(Replying to parent and GP)

I wasn't suggesting an IM system should be the source of truth for long-form documentation. But searching Slack works better than searching email you weren't cc'd on. Virtually anything is better than email for many essential aspects of collaboration.

Want to add someone to the mailing list and loop them in? How many prior emails will you forward to them?

Someone replies to one of several points in an email, someone else wants to address a different point, and there are a mix of habits and patterns for whether / how much / where to quote or include the previous messages in a response....

vs adding someone to a channel where they can review the conversation history, and some combination of threads and links to additional channels or external resources can adequately support whatever direction(s) the conversation takes.

In any case, it's the wrong tool for the job in so many ways, so much of the time. Hence my recommendation to keep emails to 5 sentences, and to prefer communication tools that properly support multiuser collaboration.

we have polar opposite opinions on email and slack/teams/discord! im not sure i am even understanding the issues you brought up about email correctly.

may i ask what age bracket or generation you are? only if you're comfortable sharing, of course.

im in my 60s. and im curious if our difference of opinion here is a product of what technologies were/are available during the start & prime of our careers. i very well might be in stubborn old man mode subconciously.

Thanks for considering possible reasons for disagreement. I'd like to understand it, too. FWIW, I'm about to turn 52. Been working in tech since the late 1990s. Remote more than not. Email is great for certain specific things. But for multiuser async collaboration in the workplace, surely you've encountered problems like I have, no? Email conversations -- especially if they're long and/or include a lengthy recipient list -- are inherently prone to critical failure, completely decohering as _both_ the recipient list(s) _and_ the topic(s) under discussion can fragment from the very first of N replies, making it impossible to resolve anything conclusively or to know what's been communicated to whom.

I use a git-generated static site that has good search, so if people want to find stuff before asking that’s the go-to.

Otherwise, I can search email quite effectively. And oddly, its one of the few things Office Copilot is goos at.

I don’t email is a collaboration tool. It’s an information sharing tool and maybe workflow. Just today I had to email out to like 20 people a data call with a couple paragraphs of instruction. It’s much better than Slack for this. And I can search and find my email and their responses for all of eternity (I’ve got every email going back 20+ years instantly searchable in outlook, good luck finding a slack message from a month ago much less a decade).

> "I don’t email is a collaboration tool"

That's almost the entirety of my point. Sure, email works well for simple, unidirectional / broadcast comms. But for async collaboration involving multiple recipients and any kind of back and forth, it's inherently problematic.

So far, searching email has been more effective than searching anything else (Wiki, Slack, etc).

How do you search emails you weren't cc'd on?

If it has to be information stored in depth, then sure a KB/wiki is better.

IME, the majority of long emails should not be persisted in such places, because they contain a fair amount of errors. One could say that any long email thread should be eventually synthesized in the KB/wiki after the conversation has wound down.

And Slack/Teams? No way. If I need to write something long in response to a Slack IM, and email is verboten, then I'll insist on setting up a meeting.

I think we're on roughly the same page. Long emails are problematic. Realtime meetings or (possibly but not necessarily near-realtime) chats in a dedicated channel can and do solve email's problems.