[smallerfish]

Slack's pretty bad as an information repository. How do you know there hasn't been a subsequent discussion that updated the conclusion of a particular chat? Search isn't particularly consistent in how it serves up results.

By all means chat asynchronously to decide on something, but then get it into a wiki. I actually like Slack's auto-expiry for free accounts, as it incentivizes the mindset - if you want to keep the information around, boil it down into a readable form and put it in the right place in the company's documentation.

[kokanee]

Sure, this a correct mindset, and an obvious one for people who build and maintain information repositories professionally, but at an average company with hundreds or thousands of people, it's a losing battle to enforce. Paying for Slack and having the ability to find information in conversations that should have been documented but were not is valuable in practice.

[adamc]

This is the wrong point of view for many (probably most) workplaces, where the officially "maintained" information repositories are often very out of date and where the alternatives are usually: 1) Find a conversation you can at least start from, or 2) Get someone to give you a brain dump now.

Sure, a curated, well-maintained repository could be better. It also requires work time that usually doesn't get budgeted for. Slack is a band-aid, but a useful one.

[duskwuff]

Being able to say, "I know this issue came up a few months ago, let me see what we decided back then" -- and being able to back that up with a link -- is a superpower. Not everything that comes up in discussions gets documented.

[dwb]

Exactly the opposite of my long-term experience – Slack search is good enough that it’s my first port of call for information, and regularly finds me the right answer. It’s a better information repository in practice than any other system I’ve used at work. That is kind of sad, of course I think “proper” documentation is better, but such is life.

[smetj]

Agreed!