[ioulian]

> Also, if the data in chat is being held hostage, the org might be using chat wrong.

This is so important these days. A lot of project send users to discord, slack for documentation and help but they are not made for this purpose. Searching in chat channel for a specific problem is not a good way to handle documentation. I can't even use search engines to search that.

[mihaaly]

> Searching in chat channel for a specific problem is not a good way to handle documentation

I just wanted to highlight this. I am so happy seeing this written down explicitly and finally.

Throughout the years I struggled so much finding relevant and accurate information about a feature of a product because it was scattered in chat channels, inadequate for providing reliable data (out of date or uncertain staleness, evolving or straight up wrong suggestions found, tangential only, patial, ...). Big names do it (Unity3D, DevExpress, ...). To make the matter worst both official support personel and power users promote its use, defend its use against critique to the last blood, despite of the obvious shortcomings and unreliability for average users. It is just the lazy excuse of providing the necessary knowledge.

[criley2]

It's not lazy, it's by design. We have chat messages because the actual knowledge is stored inside of people, and chat messages are the most searchable way to see what people know outside of being able to ask them personally.

So why don't all of these people simply write it down in a notion/document store and meticulously keep it all up to date?

Because the business does not want that. We demand efficiency, so we understaff engineering departments sufficiently that there is always a little crunch, so that slightly-too-few engineers have to work slightly-harder-than-they-want to make the business successful. The end result of this intentionally engineered "lack of time" is that things like maintaining meticulous documentation are ignored, and the only time the knowledge is shared is in a frantic slack message.

The business is designed to do this. It's not laziness. It's the standard operating procedure to increase efficiency and profit.

[mihaaly]

> intentionally engineered "lack of time"

This is so true.

And it is making the industry eating itself.

The purpose of the software is not profit, but usability. Profit for the organization/owner is a tool to achive that, in some instances (it is very valuable, but not essential).

The primary self-serving focus of bigger and quicker profit leads to serious erosion of trust in technology, making the life of those building a livelihood on top of it shaky at best.

[xbar]

Time for a good librarian app to pull it out of Slack and organize it into an enterprise-managed archive?

[BlueTemplar]

You might enjoy this :

https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5509.

[mihaaly]

I do.