Impact of Slack Community on these Forums and on the Umbraco Community in general
Anyone else concerned that all the help and knowledge that exists in the Slack community is actually hurting Umbraco as a whole?
It sure is convenient, but its not archived in a place Google can see it. Also, how do people find out about the Slack community? Are we creating a secret society?
From a marketing standpoint, it reduces the buzz and community size from the world and may make Umbraco seem less used and smaller than it is.
I would love to be proven wrong, Any thoughts? What does HQ think of the Slack community?
It's difficult to argue that the Slack is not having a negative impact on forum engagement. But I'm not convinced that it's hurting the Umbraco developer community.
Well before the Slack became a thing I saw a decrease in engagement and high-quality answers on "help/question" style threads here, or as an American on the West Coast I'd see a lag time of hours to a day between messages because the forum community skews European so they're logged on at different times than myself.
I don't use the Slack for problem-solving, but it appears that when it comes to the "I need answers in a timely fashion please help" sort of discussions, it's a far more useful tool.
Which really highlights the biggest question: Why is there increasing engagement in the Slack over the forum? Probably because it's fitting the needs of the developers who use it.
I agree, it's going to harm information permanence, which is the biggest benefit of forum vs chat/slack/etc convos. It's not that Slack doesn't keep a long-tailed chat archive, but it's a lot harder to parse and doesn't appear on web searches.
So how do people get the timely, quick responses and engagement they need (especially outside of Europe) but retain the answers for future seekers?
I believe this exact conversation has been discussed about Twitter... The Chief Unicorn is always very wise to remind us that the twitter-verse is still a VERY SMALL subset of the larger community...
Yes, as Kyle says... it would be hard to argue that Slack is not having SOME impact, but again... the Slack-verse is still really small compared to the forms -- the help channel for instance is only 780 users.
I love that this is a conversation though, and interested in more opinions/feedback in this thread... should i post a link to it in slack? #tooSoon????
Yep, I cross posted to the #general channel in Slack :)
My real concern is for new or infrequent community members. If the forum becomes a ghost town or the core community stops monitoring the forums then people who could become key community members may get frustrated and leave Umbraco all together.
Also, I love being able to Google issues and see posts from 3 years ago that actually help me solve my problem. Any solutions currently on Slack now are lost to the ether and of no help to my future self.
This would mean all the people that correspond with me would have to find a new home to do so. Twitter isn't a good option either.
We had discussed this very issue several years back when we set up the Slack channel and it was raised as a risk (non-archiving and people not posting to forums).
This would mean all the people that correspond with me would have to
find a new home to do so. Twitter isn't a good option either.
We had discussed this very issue several years back when we set up the
Slack channel and it was raised as a risk (non-archiving and people
not posting to forums).
Curious to what you would propose?"
Well, there are potentially technical solutions like:
Creating a Slack integration to Our.Umbraco.org to simply archive specific channels
Posting Forum posts to Slack to encourage Slackers to answer Forum questions
Using a service like http://slackarchive.io/ to simply make the Umbraco Slack chats public and searchable
Or maybe some more human ones like:
Umbraco HQ embracing Slack and marketing it as a benefit to the community.
Making it VERY clear that Slack is available an having a simple process to sign up from our.umbraco.org / Umbraco.com
Community members in Slack being aware of the issue and encouraging people to "Take the conversation to the forum" when it becomes something that may be valuable to our future selves and other people not in Slack.
HQ assigning a support member or community engagement person to Slack and pulling in key conversations into a forum or some sort of archive mechanism
HQ team member helping people create forum posts and making it really easy to bridge the gap
Ha, ha... I just finished emailing Umbraco HQ that the Umbraco Courier forum appears dead! There is no significant activity there.
I would concur, you need to support the Umbraco Forums if you want the community to be able to search and find solutions for common issues.
Maybe if you resolve a problem in slack that someone else may experience, consider posting it to the forums as both a question and marked answer? That will make it available to google...
I agree with Jason. This forum is open to everyone and should be the default resource - not some proprietary platform that no-one in Umbraco has any direct control over.
My issue with Slack is not that it's not owned by Umbraco, but it's competing in some of the the same space as this forum, possibly to the forum's detriment. And Slack isn't community owned; it's a big corporation that uses a proprietary platform. I'd rather there be one definitive Q&A place that is free, open and searchable and indexed on the WWW. And given a choice I'd rather it be owned by HQ than a private corporation who has no particular interest in Umbraco.
Diversity is good, but sites like Skrift etc. don't try and take the place of Our Umbraco, they compliment it. And all their knowledge is open and findable on the WWW.
The trouble with Slack is that the knowledge that goes there is dissipated. It's not democratised and is rather cliquey. Imagine if a new Umbraco dev comes along and wants to find something out. What would they do? Google there question, probably, and chances are (in the past) they find the answer either here or on a community blog. But all the info in slack disappears. It's not democratised and is transient. Sure, it's fine for some things, just like Twitter etc, but I'd rather the real gems of knowledge be preserved here for everyone. The two can coexist so long as Slack doesn't take away from the forum.
I think we have fundamental disagreements (which is fine).
In my view Slack does not compete with the forums. Slack is a chat tool. It's not a Q&A format like the forums. I'd argue that Slack also compliments Our Umbraco as their is no chat ability on Our.
Maybe that's the missing link.
Then again, who DO you trust with chat messages? No offense to HQ, but are they really the ones to guard some of our personal discussions? I'm not sure I trust many people with that data EXCEPT for companies who only do that. Also chat is a full-fledged product that needs to span multiple devices and platforms.
The Slack channel is run by a community member and I think that qualifies as a community project. Want to argue that it's Slack who 'owns' the data? Sure, I don't know the ins/outs of their data usage\privacy policy.
Should we send the social media police out to reign in the Facebook groups? Those are closed groups unlike Slack. What about Twitter, should we ask that no DM's take place if it contains Umbraco information?
Chat tools aren't meant to be archived by design for the WWW. It's a social tool and many of the conversations I have on Slack contain non-public information.
Many times I'll just ask how someone is doing? Maybe they are having a really really bad day and need a pick me up. Maybe they had a death in the family. Maybe they just overcame a coding issue and they just wanna spam the chat with emoji's for sake of joy.
Two different animals and while I can understand why it seems like they are competing, I think they are complimentary.
Do problems get solved on Slack but not exported to Our?Most definitely.
Is copy\pasting to the forum the right answer?Maybe.
Should someone write a blog about it?Maybe.
Should the docs be updated?Maybe.
Will people use what they want to use?Most definitely.
I'm not sure we have a fundamental disagreement. Slack being used for what it is ie. a chat tool is fine. But I thought this was more about it being used as a replacement for this forum? As the go-to place for Q&A? I'd feel exactly the same way about Facebook groups, too. But no one is saying ban them or anything, just be careful that collective knowledge is freely available.
I ask questions on Twitter all the time - again, no issue. But often if it requires more detail then people say, "take it to the forum". I'd like useful information that can benefit everyone (not just the person asking) be disseminated and available to everyone. That means somewhere that gets indexed on WWW - doesn't have to be this forum, could be a blog or whatever. But not Facebook group, Slack etc.
If we compare Slack and Twitter, I think the reason Twitter questions af often directed at the forums is that the character limit realy inhibits ability to answer. Slack is not as restrictive in that respoect, and better enables quick sparring.
I think you will find that the average message size on Slack is smaller than that of a forum post, which is only natural for a chat, but also really shows the difference between the concept of getting help on a Q&A style forum vs. getting sparring on a chat.
I do understand the concerns voiced here, but I really don't think it's an issue. Sure, Slack chats are not archived. Neither are chats at meetups, or people pairing on a problem at the office.
Some forms of sparring is just not very well suited for acrhiving. That does not mean that it disappears. It will be stored in the memory of those who participated or read the chat, and that way the Slack channel becomes a collective brain that might be able to point you to solutions that google will not find, because you don't know what you are actually looking for.
i use chat to see if there are solutions i know and can point to.. and discuss, but when I need an answer I try the full route of post a message on forum and then link to it from twitter and ocassionally slack..
Yep, this not a new topic. This came up about 2 years ago during the start of the Slack channel. I also think we're trying to merge two types of communication that aren't meant to be merged.
The problem for me isn't 'technology x', it's 'technology x' that needs integrated better into the community eco-system.
I think we're vilifying a resource for no good reason.
We should acknowledge that a good idea has been tested, has become pretty widespread and now it's up to the HQ to integrate it or reject it.
We should also talk about the elephant in the room, PR's of this magnitude aren't something most have time for (integrating the history). And if someone did, there's a good chance the PR is going to die without blessing from HQ.
Before a PR even gets discussed, we gotta ask ourselves if we want a bunch of banter imported into the forums? If we could cherry pick a few, great, but in general Slack is a chat app; it'll have different context that a forum would need.
If imports happen, do we need to have a disclaimer? Hey this will be made public? Chat in Slack is semi-private.
I'm all ears, but are we describing a problem the forums and not Slack? i.e. Slack offers a better experience?
My position is there is room for both and users have to take it upon themselves to put it out in the public if they want. Nobody is making anyone use Slack or the forum. Choose the tool that fits your needs.
I participate in the Slack channels, but not the forum currently. The reason being that it simply fits me better.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, a forum warrants more "high quality" answers (and questions). That also means that a question like "Has anyone used package xyz before" is not a very good forum question. It is a conversation starter.
Is there an overlap between which questions are asked in the forum and on Slack? Sure. Will one cover 100% of what the other offers? No.
I personally don't think that Slack draws a lot of traffic/activity from the forum, simply because the forum might never have gotten the questions in the first place.
I do think that some integrations could greatly improve the synergy between the two, just by posting new forum questions in a channel or similar.
Without having any stats to back it up, maybe the forum is already a great resource for people searching for answers, which could lead to fewer questions being asked.
If you think of Slack as more of a shared office space, and the forums as Stack Overflow, I think that describes the difference in approach to the platforms.
Is there an RSS feed of Forum posts that could be integrated into Slack? If not, could HQ create one? Who can add that into Slack?
We create a new page in Documentation called "Where to get Help" and submit a PR. That would detail the various areas that help might be given and include the Slack community. (Does this exist?)
Do these two steps seem logical and small enough to actually get done?
Slack has a native integration that can monitor an RSS feed and post that into a specific channel.
The reason I chose that is to give awareness to the Slack community of Forum posts. Perhaps that may inspire them to answer a question or two on the Forum. Maybe it will remind people that it exists and they will ask more complex questions there. Many other items (Twitter, Umbraco Issues, Github PRs) are already pulled into the #feed channel. Maybe it just goes there or perhaps it posts to a new channel.
I would prefer to have information on Slack archived somewhere on Our, but we don't control Our or have any access to that that I'm aware of (could be wrong here :)). Plus, I'm not really sure how that would work best (As you and others have pointed out). It's harder and more likely to sputter out and fail.
The idea to PR to Documentation is mostly around the level of control we have. I can add a new page to Documentation and at least have somewhere that talks about Slack on the Our Umbraco site (assuming the HQ merges it in). I'd rather have Umbraco HQ make something more prominent, but I'll take baby steps.
Slack is an open community. But you have to know it exists to join. The Slack community isn't advertised anywhere that I'm aware of.
Does that help explain my motivations? They're mostly around things that can happen easily and quickly that might move the needle a little.
There's definitely an awareness issue that Slack Umbraco exists and I would love the HQ to champion spreading the message, but I'm not sure if they'd be willing since they don't 'own' the channel. I wouldn't blame them if they didn't want to.
I think putting in some notification into Slack from the forum could be useful if it went to a particular channel as to not spam. I'd also think it would have to be limited to 'new topics' only and no replies; otherwise it's just gonna be noisy. It may be too noisy with just topics. I'd like to know how many new topics get posted per day to gauge that a bit.
Not sure what comes from the RSS feed. Maybe you have insight there.
Trust me, I hear you and for the record I don't control Slack either. I just happen to work for the guy who does ;)
In a perfect world Our Umbraco gets spun off into a true community site run by non-employees. That way the messaging, the decision making and the evolution is more organic to the community. If we want something, we don't have to compete with the time constraints of the HQ folks.
In the present world, we remain at the mercy of HQ on whether they wish to embrace the Slack channel or not. They might even create their own to retain control. They may never read this thread. Maybe it's a power struggle thing.
Who knows.
Without HQ input, I'd say we're going to remain at the status quo.
There is a new Community Engagement Officer that might be the one to wine and dine.
For the Slack side of things, I think we'd need to give Tom a plan for him to review.
I commend you for bringing up this topic as I'm sure it'll result in something better for all.
As already mentioned a few times by others as well, I think it is different types of questions that get asked on Our compared to on Slack.
For me, Slack is for asking a quick question, which then most likely also will receive a quick answer. Our questions tend to be longer and more detailed, which then also requires a longer and more detailed answer (more or less what Morten already wrote).
Therefore, I seldom have the time to look through topics and answer questions on Our when at work, but I often skim through the messages on Slack (as it requires less time). I may however answer a question on Our if someone posts a link on Slack (same goes for Twitter). So perhaps encouraging users on Slack to create a new topic if they have a question, and then posting a link to the topic on Slack is the way to go? I think abandoning Slack entirely would be a shame.
Also, Slack is for much more than just asking questions. It is also for socializing, having a quick chat, discussing meetups etc. - some of the things Our isn't for.
Anyways, if we look beyond just Slack, and at community generated content in general, I've tried to raise this issue with the HQ a few times before:
At the Codegarden Retreat this year, I was part of the group that looked at Our and community content, and we managed to add GitHub contributions and meetups to the front page of Our. I felt there was an interest by the HQ to bring more community based content to Our, but as you can see, there hasn't been any activity in my issue referenced above. I also have a pending pull request for bringing community blog posts to Our as well, which hasn't had any activity either:
So again, there seems to be an interest for this by the HQ, but I assume working on Umbraco, Cloud and similar ends up taking priority. But hopefully we get some of the HQ guys to have a look at this topic.
You're right - keeping up with demands for products and scaling the organisation has meant that Our TLC hasn't gotten the love we wanted to. The good news is that part of scaling the organisation meant that we've added a dedicated role for community (our uCEO) and among the first tasks is an action plan for improving Our.
At HQ we love community initiatives and support lots of them (including Skrift, festivals and meetups). Diversity moves the community forward.
There's also lots to love about the Slack channel - especially around a more casual way of communicating and the realtime aspect and I think it's a great alternative and those who finds it relevant also seems to find it. There's however also a number of concerns - some of them being showstoppers for HQ to promote it further.
Lack of control. The Slack channel is running at the mercy of Slack. Their TOS mean that the channel could be gone tomorrow or would require substantial $$$. Unlikely yes, possible yes.
Lack of control of ownership. The Slack channel isn't owned by the community or HQ, but by individuals (or by an agency called Tonic) and there's no TOS between users and the owner(s) - thus no information about who owns data nor about privacy.
Scaling realtime. The average amount of visitors on Our is 15x+ to Slack. Would that scale? Slack will scale for sure, but will the noise of 15x users in the Slack channel make it a great place to be?
Slack is a realtime chat tool. Not a knowledge base. Due to the nature of the message format, search is (really) terrible and even if people sticked to threads (which they even at the current volume don't) an exported thread wouldn't be a nice read (say if someone made a way to export a thread).
Regarding Slack and scaling, I also participate a bit in the Sitecore community which currently contains around 3000 members. I think a chat tool will scale itself, meaning that if it gets too noisy, people will leave, or break out to smaller channels.
The Sitecore Slack has a few channels created by maintainers of popular packages/tools, making it a great place for getting help with debugging, or asking advice, and getting help from not just the maintainer, but other users of the package.
I get that Slack is a propriatary platform, but since the chat is, as also mentioned elsewhere, transient, if Slack were to suddenly shut down, the biggest problem IMHO would be the loss of the tool, and not the loss of the archive.
Would it be preferred if there was an open source, HQ hosted version of Slack? Sure. But right now I think it is a great addition to the community.
Also if anyone has a question about stuff and somebody clarifies it in a really neat way; be it on Slack or in the Forum ... Then consider it is a great candidate for a PR to the documentation pages... ... Particularly for 'how would I do x' type questions... Both resources provide a natural feedback loop for what people need help with and issues discovered with latest releases... Slack has had a bigger impact on twitter activity but not so much the forum which depends more on the availability of a smaller group of secretive individuals... Anyway the cool thing would be to have the machinations in place to make the feedback from forum/slack easily evolve into the docs and the issue tracker..
I think this is the answer right here. Its on us, the community in general, to add useful solutions into the official docs from Slack, forum threads, blogs, SO, etc.
Would be super helpful especially for people new to Umbraco.
I'm going to make a personal effort to do this whenever I can moving forward.
Could it be that we just have a protocol/sticky post/that sort of thing, that asks Slack users to use the Our forums for in-depth technical questions so the rest of the community can benefit/help?
I agree that archiving/searchability is the main benefit of Forum & Docs, whereas quick, informal chit-chat is better suited for Slack.
I think any Slack -> Our Forum automatic integration would be challenging and messy. So, the ideas I think are great:
Remind people on Slack to make a Forum post for detailed Q&A needs when you see it getting complicated.
Get useful info into the Forum, Docs, or a Blog post after-the-fact (perhaps pinging Sofie for transcription help when something juicy shows up?)
If we could get a "Forum Topics" channel in Slack to take a feed of new Our posts then it's possible that Slackers will perhaps become aware of forum posts and be able to answer them, as well as helping remind Slackers that the forum exists and gets attention as well, thus encouraging them to post there in the first place :-)
Does slack support creating custom extensions? I see that you can create custom /commands. My thinking is that if it's made as easy as possible for people to throw useful information over the fence into Our then it might be done more often.
I agree that just copying conversations verbatim is not the way to go, but if you were able to say, highlight a bunch of useful chat, right-click and select add to Our or Umbraco Documentation and then it would bring you to somewhere on Our that would allow you to better format it, give some context to it and submit it. I've no idea if something like this is possible!
I also like Heather's idea of bringing a recent posts feed into a dedicated Slack channel. It could bring more awareness to posts on Our. Maybe it could be scoped to posts on Our that aren't getting replies over a period of time.
Yes to the first few thoughts, but might be a paid option (then again might be able to slip this in) also an API endpoint would have to be opened for Our which is doubtful due to the concerns by HQ. Thinking this option is less viable due to the complexity and approvals required.
There might be a feed for 'new topics' from Our to plug into Slack (probably most viable option), would need to either find it or get HQ to allow a PR for such a thing. Could also incur risk that aggregator sites abuse it.
Does the Umbraco Slack channel still exist? I have searched and searched an can't find it. I've also tried to get on the Umbraco Discord, but my new account was immediately locked. Any info would be awesome. Thank you!
Hi,
No the community slack channel was closed down a while ago now. It's all on discord.
I'll flag your comment with Sebastiaan and see if he can see why your account on discord has been locked :)
Impact of Slack Community on these Forums and on the Umbraco Community in general
Anyone else concerned that all the help and knowledge that exists in the Slack community is actually hurting Umbraco as a whole?
It sure is convenient, but its not archived in a place Google can see it. Also, how do people find out about the Slack community? Are we creating a secret society?
From a marketing standpoint, it reduces the buzz and community size from the world and may make Umbraco seem less used and smaller than it is.
I would love to be proven wrong, Any thoughts? What does HQ think of the Slack community?
I concur.
It's difficult to argue that the Slack is not having a negative impact on forum engagement. But I'm not convinced that it's hurting the Umbraco developer community.
Well before the Slack became a thing I saw a decrease in engagement and high-quality answers on "help/question" style threads here, or as an American on the West Coast I'd see a lag time of hours to a day between messages because the forum community skews European so they're logged on at different times than myself.
I don't use the Slack for problem-solving, but it appears that when it comes to the "I need answers in a timely fashion please help" sort of discussions, it's a far more useful tool.
Which really highlights the biggest question: Why is there increasing engagement in the Slack over the forum? Probably because it's fitting the needs of the developers who use it.
I agree, it's going to harm information permanence, which is the biggest benefit of forum vs chat/slack/etc convos. It's not that Slack doesn't keep a long-tailed chat archive, but it's a lot harder to parse and doesn't appear on web searches.
So how do people get the timely, quick responses and engagement they need (especially outside of Europe) but retain the answers for future seekers?
Comment author was deleted
I'd say you nailed my thoughts exactly Kyle.
Forums have shortcomings, Slack has shortcomings.
Different tools for different needs.
This forum is nice, but lacks quick turnaround chat style that Slack offers. Slack is non-archiving.
It's not a secret society, it's free and open for anyone to use.
What makes it secret might be it's not promoted by the HQ.
Will discouraging it's use actually mean people will stop using it?
It can't be banned and another 'channel' could easily be started to circumvent.
I'd say it's up to the users of each platform to decide, good or bad.
I believe this exact conversation has been discussed about Twitter... The Chief Unicorn is always very wise to remind us that the twitter-verse is still a VERY SMALL subset of the larger community...
Yes, as Kyle says... it would be hard to argue that Slack is not having SOME impact, but again... the Slack-verse is still really small compared to the forms -- the help channel for instance is only 780 users.
I love that this is a conversation though, and interested in more opinions/feedback in this thread... should i post a link to it in slack? #tooSoon????
Nothing but Love... you know I kid :P
...
Comment author was deleted
Great comparison with Twitter.
When someone asks for help on Twitter, I refer them to the forum, not Slack.
If someone needs me in real-time, hit me on Slack.
Yep, I cross posted to the #general channel in Slack :)
My real concern is for new or infrequent community members. If the forum becomes a ghost town or the core community stops monitoring the forums then people who could become key community members may get frustrated and leave Umbraco all together.
Also, I love being able to Google issues and see posts from 3 years ago that actually help me solve my problem. Any solutions currently on Slack now are lost to the ether and of no help to my future self.
Comment author was deleted
Is the proposed solution to turn off Slack?
This would mean all the people that correspond with me would have to find a new home to do so. Twitter isn't a good option either.
We had discussed this very issue several years back when we set up the Slack channel and it was raised as a risk (non-archiving and people not posting to forums).
Curious to what you would propose :) ?
Comment author was deleted
Dang it, I think the forum just dropped my last comment :(
+1 for Slack being less buggy ;)
I got it in my email... :)
Kevin:
Well, there are potentially technical solutions like:
Or maybe some more human ones like:
Just riffing here
Comment author was deleted
All good stuff +1
One issue to be aware of: the channel is not a paid one so there may be limits on integrations.
I've explored making it a Not For Profit status but ultimately I think that'll fail as all entities involved are for profit.
Definitely would like the HQ to weigh in :)
Ha, ha... I just finished emailing Umbraco HQ that the Umbraco Courier forum appears dead! There is no significant activity there.
I would concur, you need to support the Umbraco Forums if you want the community to be able to search and find solutions for common issues.
Maybe if you resolve a problem in slack that someone else may experience, consider posting it to the forums as both a question and marked answer? That will make it available to google...
I agree with Jason. This forum is open to everyone and should be the default resource - not some proprietary platform that no-one in Umbraco has any direct control over.
Comment author was deleted
I would also say that some things are community run and isn't always Umbraco corporate owned.
Packages are the same way are they not?
Skrift is community run, not curated by the HQ; we wouldn't say the same about them would we?
Maybe Our Umbraco should be community run?
The Slack channel idea was born from a open space discussion at CG. Lot's of folks liked the idea; nobody at the HQ took initiative.
Are we upset that community members took initiative?
Why is Slack any different? Because it became successful?
If it had 2 users, it would be disregarded. Now that it has 700+, it's a threat?
I think this gets solved by the HQ taking an interest in Slack. Exports can be created. Jason has some good ideas.
My issue with Slack is not that it's not owned by Umbraco, but it's competing in some of the the same space as this forum, possibly to the forum's detriment. And Slack isn't community owned; it's a big corporation that uses a proprietary platform. I'd rather there be one definitive Q&A place that is free, open and searchable and indexed on the WWW. And given a choice I'd rather it be owned by HQ than a private corporation who has no particular interest in Umbraco.
Diversity is good, but sites like Skrift etc. don't try and take the place of Our Umbraco, they compliment it. And all their knowledge is open and findable on the WWW.
The trouble with Slack is that the knowledge that goes there is dissipated. It's not democratised and is rather cliquey. Imagine if a new Umbraco dev comes along and wants to find something out. What would they do? Google there question, probably, and chances are (in the past) they find the answer either here or on a community blog. But all the info in slack disappears. It's not democratised and is transient. Sure, it's fine for some things, just like Twitter etc, but I'd rather the real gems of knowledge be preserved here for everyone. The two can coexist so long as Slack doesn't take away from the forum.
Comment author was deleted
I think we have fundamental disagreements (which is fine).
In my view Slack does not compete with the forums. Slack is a chat tool. It's not a Q&A format like the forums. I'd argue that Slack also compliments Our Umbraco as their is no chat ability on Our.
Maybe that's the missing link.
Then again, who DO you trust with chat messages? No offense to HQ, but are they really the ones to guard some of our personal discussions? I'm not sure I trust many people with that data EXCEPT for companies who only do that. Also chat is a full-fledged product that needs to span multiple devices and platforms.
The Slack channel is run by a community member and I think that qualifies as a community project. Want to argue that it's Slack who 'owns' the data? Sure, I don't know the ins/outs of their data usage\privacy policy.
Should we send the social media police out to reign in the Facebook groups? Those are closed groups unlike Slack. What about Twitter, should we ask that no DM's take place if it contains Umbraco information?
Chat tools aren't meant to be archived by design for the WWW. It's a social tool and many of the conversations I have on Slack contain non-public information.
Many times I'll just ask how someone is doing? Maybe they are having a really really bad day and need a pick me up. Maybe they had a death in the family. Maybe they just overcame a coding issue and they just wanna spam the chat with emoji's for sake of joy.
Two different animals and while I can understand why it seems like they are competing, I think they are complimentary.
Do problems get solved on Slack but not exported to Our? Most definitely.
Is copy\pasting to the forum the right answer? Maybe.
Should someone write a blog about it? Maybe.
Should the docs be updated? Maybe.
Will people use what they want to use? Most definitely.
Merry Christmas
I'm not sure we have a fundamental disagreement. Slack being used for what it is ie. a chat tool is fine. But I thought this was more about it being used as a replacement for this forum? As the go-to place for Q&A? I'd feel exactly the same way about Facebook groups, too. But no one is saying ban them or anything, just be careful that collective knowledge is freely available.
I ask questions on Twitter all the time - again, no issue. But often if it requires more detail then people say, "take it to the forum". I'd like useful information that can benefit everyone (not just the person asking) be disseminated and available to everyone. That means somewhere that gets indexed on WWW - doesn't have to be this forum, could be a blog or whatever. But not Facebook group, Slack etc.
If we compare Slack and Twitter, I think the reason Twitter questions af often directed at the forums is that the character limit realy inhibits ability to answer. Slack is not as restrictive in that respoect, and better enables quick sparring.
I think you will find that the average message size on Slack is smaller than that of a forum post, which is only natural for a chat, but also really shows the difference between the concept of getting help on a Q&A style forum vs. getting sparring on a chat.
I do understand the concerns voiced here, but I really don't think it's an issue. Sure, Slack chats are not archived. Neither are chats at meetups, or people pairing on a problem at the office.
Some forms of sparring is just not very well suited for acrhiving. That does not mean that it disappears. It will be stored in the memory of those who participated or read the chat, and that way the Slack channel becomes a collective brain that might be able to point you to solutions that google will not find, because you don't know what you are actually looking for.
I think you may have nailed the issue..
i use chat to see if there are solutions i know and can point to.. and discuss, but when I need an answer I try the full route of post a message on forum and then link to it from twitter and ocassionally slack..
I think the Slack community has value. I'm not proposing to get rid of it.
Do you acknowledge my concerns? Do they concern you too?
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Yep, this not a new topic. This came up about 2 years ago during the start of the Slack channel. I also think we're trying to merge two types of communication that aren't meant to be merged.
The problem for me isn't 'technology x', it's 'technology x' that needs integrated better into the community eco-system.
I think we're vilifying a resource for no good reason.
We should acknowledge that a good idea has been tested, has become pretty widespread and now it's up to the HQ to integrate it or reject it.
We should also talk about the elephant in the room, PR's of this magnitude aren't something most have time for (integrating the history). And if someone did, there's a good chance the PR is going to die without blessing from HQ.
Before a PR even gets discussed, we gotta ask ourselves if we want a bunch of banter imported into the forums? If we could cherry pick a few, great, but in general Slack is a chat app; it'll have different context that a forum would need.
If imports happen, do we need to have a disclaimer? Hey this will be made public? Chat in Slack is semi-private.
I'm all ears, but are we describing a problem the forums and not Slack? i.e. Slack offers a better experience?
My position is there is room for both and users have to take it upon themselves to put it out in the public if they want. Nobody is making anyone use Slack or the forum. Choose the tool that fits your needs.
I participate in the Slack channels, but not the forum currently. The reason being that it simply fits me better.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, a forum warrants more "high quality" answers (and questions). That also means that a question like "Has anyone used package xyz before" is not a very good forum question. It is a conversation starter.
Is there an overlap between which questions are asked in the forum and on Slack? Sure. Will one cover 100% of what the other offers? No.
I personally don't think that Slack draws a lot of traffic/activity from the forum, simply because the forum might never have gotten the questions in the first place.
I do think that some integrations could greatly improve the synergy between the two, just by posting new forum questions in a channel or similar.
Without having any stats to back it up, maybe the forum is already a great resource for people searching for answers, which could lead to fewer questions being asked.
If you think of Slack as more of a shared office space, and the forums as Stack Overflow, I think that describes the difference in approach to the platforms.
What if we start small:
Is there an RSS feed of Forum posts that could be integrated into Slack? If not, could HQ create one? Who can add that into Slack?
We create a new page in Documentation called "Where to get Help" and submit a PR. That would detail the various areas that help might be given and include the Slack community. (Does this exist?)
Do these two steps seem logical and small enough to actually get done?
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I'd need a better example of what you mean by posting into Slack from RSS.
Got an example? I thought the idea was to go the other way?
Tom Fulton is the gatekeeper of Slack. Ultimately we'd need him to buy in on any integrations.
http://umbracians.chat has always been an open door and there is no approval process. I think it's as easy or easier to sign up than the forums.
Kevin,
Slack has a native integration that can monitor an RSS feed and post that into a specific channel.
The reason I chose that is to give awareness to the Slack community of Forum posts. Perhaps that may inspire them to answer a question or two on the Forum. Maybe it will remind people that it exists and they will ask more complex questions there. Many other items (Twitter, Umbraco Issues, Github PRs) are already pulled into the #feed channel. Maybe it just goes there or perhaps it posts to a new channel.
I would prefer to have information on Slack archived somewhere on Our, but we don't control Our or have any access to that that I'm aware of (could be wrong here :)). Plus, I'm not really sure how that would work best (As you and others have pointed out). It's harder and more likely to sputter out and fail.
The idea to PR to Documentation is mostly around the level of control we have. I can add a new page to Documentation and at least have somewhere that talks about Slack on the Our Umbraco site (assuming the HQ merges it in). I'd rather have Umbraco HQ make something more prominent, but I'll take baby steps.
Slack is an open community. But you have to know it exists to join. The Slack community isn't advertised anywhere that I'm aware of.
Does that help explain my motivations? They're mostly around things that can happen easily and quickly that might move the needle a little.
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There's definitely an awareness issue that Slack Umbraco exists and I would love the HQ to champion spreading the message, but I'm not sure if they'd be willing since they don't 'own' the channel. I wouldn't blame them if they didn't want to.
I think putting in some notification into Slack from the forum could be useful if it went to a particular channel as to not spam. I'd also think it would have to be limited to 'new topics' only and no replies; otherwise it's just gonna be noisy. It may be too noisy with just topics. I'd like to know how many new topics get posted per day to gauge that a bit.
Not sure what comes from the RSS feed. Maybe you have insight there.
Trust me, I hear you and for the record I don't control Slack either. I just happen to work for the guy who does ;)
In a perfect world Our Umbraco gets spun off into a true community site run by non-employees. That way the messaging, the decision making and the evolution is more organic to the community. If we want something, we don't have to compete with the time constraints of the HQ folks.
In the present world, we remain at the mercy of HQ on whether they wish to embrace the Slack channel or not. They might even create their own to retain control. They may never read this thread. Maybe it's a power struggle thing.
Who knows.
Without HQ input, I'd say we're going to remain at the status quo.
There is a new Community Engagement Officer that might be the one to wine and dine.
For the Slack side of things, I think we'd need to give Tom a plan for him to review.
I commend you for bringing up this topic as I'm sure it'll result in something better for all.
As already mentioned a few times by others as well, I think it is different types of questions that get asked on Our compared to on Slack.
For me, Slack is for asking a quick question, which then most likely also will receive a quick answer. Our questions tend to be longer and more detailed, which then also requires a longer and more detailed answer (more or less what Morten already wrote).
Therefore, I seldom have the time to look through topics and answer questions on Our when at work, but I often skim through the messages on Slack (as it requires less time). I may however answer a question on Our if someone posts a link on Slack (same goes for Twitter). So perhaps encouraging users on Slack to create a new topic if they have a question, and then posting a link to the topic on Slack is the way to go? I think abandoning Slack entirely would be a shame.
Also, Slack is for much more than just asking questions. It is also for socializing, having a quick chat, discussing meetups etc. - some of the things Our isn't for.
Anyways, if we look beyond just Slack, and at community generated content in general, I've tried to raise this issue with the HQ a few times before:
https://our.umbraco.org/forum/ourumb-dev-forum/features/72620-community-page-on-ourumbracoorg
http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/OUR-455
At the Codegarden Retreat this year, I was part of the group that looked at Our and community content, and we managed to add GitHub contributions and meetups to the front page of Our. I felt there was an interest by the HQ to bring more community based content to Our, but as you can see, there hasn't been any activity in my issue referenced above. I also have a pending pull request for bringing community blog posts to Our as well, which hasn't had any activity either:
https://github.com/umbraco/OurUmbraco/pull/111
So again, there seems to be an interest for this by the HQ, but I assume working on Umbraco, Cloud and similar ends up taking priority. But hopefully we get some of the HQ guys to have a look at this topic.
Hi Anders!
You're right - keeping up with demands for products and scaling the organisation has meant that Our TLC hasn't gotten the love we wanted to. The good news is that part of scaling the organisation meant that we've added a dedicated role for community (our uCEO) and among the first tasks is an action plan for improving Our.
Best, Niels...
At HQ we love community initiatives and support lots of them (including Skrift, festivals and meetups). Diversity moves the community forward.
There's also lots to love about the Slack channel - especially around a more casual way of communicating and the realtime aspect and I think it's a great alternative and those who finds it relevant also seems to find it. There's however also a number of concerns - some of them being showstoppers for HQ to promote it further.
Best,
Niels...
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Out of curiosity, what is the 'Our' terms of service and privacy policy?
Regarding Slack and scaling, I also participate a bit in the Sitecore community which currently contains around 3000 members. I think a chat tool will scale itself, meaning that if it gets too noisy, people will leave, or break out to smaller channels.
The Sitecore Slack has a few channels created by maintainers of popular packages/tools, making it a great place for getting help with debugging, or asking advice, and getting help from not just the maintainer, but other users of the package.
I get that Slack is a propriatary platform, but since the chat is, as also mentioned elsewhere, transient, if Slack were to suddenly shut down, the biggest problem IMHO would be the loss of the tool, and not the loss of the archive.
Would it be preferred if there was an open source, HQ hosted version of Slack? Sure. But right now I think it is a great addition to the community.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=our+umbraco+terms
Anything else I can do for you, your highness?
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Niels, thank you for the sarcasm or whatever it is you're attempting.
I was simply looking for a link in the header, footer, homepage and didn't see one. Nobody is here looking for a fight.
Is the answer that there is no privacy policy? Should we ask what our data is being used for?
Please be respectful as no one else here has been disrespectful.
We're simply pondering what would make things better.
Fair call - slightly frustrated that you didn’t even bother trying to find it - H5IS. It should definitely be in the footer - anyone up for a PR?
Same with the privacy policy, I’ll seek that it gets added ASAP.
Thanks, merry Christmas.
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Merry Christmas
Also if anyone has a question about stuff and somebody clarifies it in a really neat way; be it on Slack or in the Forum ... Then consider it is a great candidate for a PR to the documentation pages... ... Particularly for 'how would I do x' type questions... Both resources provide a natural feedback loop for what people need help with and issues discovered with latest releases... Slack has had a bigger impact on twitter activity but not so much the forum which depends more on the availability of a smaller group of secretive individuals... Anyway the cool thing would be to have the machinations in place to make the feedback from forum/slack easily evolve into the docs and the issue tracker..
Marc,
I think this is the answer right here. Its on us, the community in general, to add useful solutions into the official docs from Slack, forum threads, blogs, SO, etc.
Would be super helpful especially for people new to Umbraco.
I'm going to make a personal effort to do this whenever I can moving forward.
-Amir
Could it be that we just have a protocol/sticky post/that sort of thing, that asks Slack users to use the Our forums for in-depth technical questions so the rest of the community can benefit/help?
Merry Crimble and HNY :)
I think the Slack channel is more personal. It's great to be able to message people individually to ask for their help/feedback/opinions on stuff.
When I see some gold in slack, if i have time, I try to capture it and write a blog post on the topic so others can benefit from it if they google it.
I like slack - but until I saw this conversation I was unware that a slack channel even existed.
Really good thoughts/ideas provided here.
I agree that archiving/searchability is the main benefit of Forum & Docs, whereas quick, informal chit-chat is better suited for Slack.
I think any Slack -> Our Forum automatic integration would be challenging and messy. So, the ideas I think are great:
If we could get a "Forum Topics" channel in Slack to take a feed of new Our posts then it's possible that Slackers will perhaps become aware of forum posts and be able to answer them, as well as helping remind Slackers that the forum exists and gets attention as well, thus encouraging them to post there in the first place :-)
Does slack support creating custom extensions? I see that you can create custom /commands. My thinking is that if it's made as easy as possible for people to throw useful information over the fence into Our then it might be done more often.
I agree that just copying conversations verbatim is not the way to go, but if you were able to say, highlight a bunch of useful chat, right-click and select add to Our or Umbraco Documentation and then it would bring you to somewhere on Our that would allow you to better format it, give some context to it and submit it. I've no idea if something like this is possible!
I also like Heather's idea of bringing a recent posts feed into a dedicated Slack channel. It could bring more awareness to posts on Our. Maybe it could be scoped to posts on Our that aren't getting replies over a period of time.
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Alan,
Not bad thoughts from both you and Heather.
Cheers.
Does the Umbraco Slack channel still exist? I have searched and searched an can't find it. I've also tried to get on the Umbraco Discord, but my new account was immediately locked. Any info would be awesome. Thank you!
Hi, No the community slack channel was closed down a while ago now. It's all on discord. I'll flag your comment with Sebastiaan and see if he can see why your account on discord has been locked :)
Thanks so much, Jason! Appreciate the help.
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