Chats vs Channels

17 January, 2025

tech

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I have been on Don Quixote type quest to get my coworkers to post useful discussions and try and mimimize chat use to 1:1 Basic suggestion if more than 3 people might be interesed in something it should be on a channel. But lets look at why i’ve failed.

Why devs moved from mail/chat -> slack/discord/teams

Despite my arguments below I think most software developers moved to slack/discord/teams because it had a higher signal to noise ratio to begin with. The smart people you moved first and found a quiet place they could talk to other smart people. Email because it is actually more open was a victim of its own success. Anyone hit you up and once they’re past the spam filter go to the top of your inbox. Worse “tooling” would often flood your inbox. Good tooling could be filtered (though your responsiblity) chatgpt o1 here

You’ll notice that channels that are two broad (too many users/topics) usually die off. Thats because of low signal.

Linking is subtly important. I can document a coversation on a pull request or put it in an email thread or github issue. Even if outside people can’t click it future insiders will benefit.

Why channels are better over chats.

Mostly discoverability. Channels can be linked and found latter via search. That search might suck now but should improve. The AI’s will eventually comsume your channels and produce some magic. Your chats will be lost to time.

With chats I have no way of disocvering it other than having a member drop me in. I can’t really get the info out other than sticking some bot in. If its a two person chat you have to start over and copy and paste.

Chats also will try and cross topics over time and become even more confused. (think about namign chats should it be named for the topic or the people in it).

Why people fall back to chats.

more to come

1. Knowing where the right channel is.
2. Notifications
3. Cross org work.
4. Meetigns goto chats not channels.
5. NO way to turn a chat into a thread.

Ways to make this better.

more to come

Give rights to share thread and channels across orges