[jbay808]

> automatically wiped of messages older than two weeks

How do you determine historical truth in a potential conflict scenario, where a manager says "why didn't anybody tell me we'd be running a test at the customer site?" and the engineer says "but I announced it two weeks ago and you even thumbs-upped the post!"?

[ithinkso]

The same way as 'I've told you that when we ate lunch last week, remember?'. The point is to make sure Slack is treated the same way as a conversation, not as a documentation and project history

[wombat-man]

Yeah, where I'm at most "important" stuff is at least in a doc somewhere separate from chat or email.

[xboxnolifes]

The commenter just said slack is not the source of truth in the org. If the post was important, the result should have been documented in the source of truth.

[jbay808]

Sure, but the context is that the message wasn't something that the org permanently documents to refer back to, like... an API or a list of deliverables or something. It's just run-of-the-mill workplace interpersonal communications and announcements, like announcing that there's going to be an earthquake drill, or that you're going to be working from home the first week of August. Not documentation. Until a miscommunication occurs and you're suddenly digging for records to piece together how things went wrong.

What communications tool would people use for announcing an earthquake drill? And what does the messaging tool get used for?

Do you send an email to keep the paper trail (with the downsides of email, like that record only being searchable by the people it was sent to at the time)? Or does somebody update the company wiki with records like "2022-07-30: jbay808 absent today due to doctor's appointment"?

[beAbU]

What would be used in the total absence of an IM tool?

How was this managed 10 years ago? Email?

How was this managed 50 years ago? Physical bulletin board?

What the GP is trying to drive at is that slack should be treated like a passing conversation, and nothing more. It cannot be relied upon as a persistent source of truth or a knowledge base.

We try to apply the same philosphy within my team.

[michaelt]

By not having a culture where people need historical records to cover their ass.

[pcmoney]

1000% this. If you cant trust each other absolutely none of this matters.

If for some reason you need an auditable record of your chats thats fine but decisions should hopefully be documented elsewhere and linked into the thread/convo.