I think Slack really needs to tweak their default notification settings. Before you know what you're doing you end up with an anxiety-inducing list of bolded room names after you've been away from your machine for 10 minutes.
Or maybe they shouldn't have defaults - when you join a room it should ask you how you want to be notified. Since I've set 90% of the rooms I'm in to "muted until someone @s me" I've found it to be a much better experience, but setting that up was a pain.
I don't use Slack, but when I tried it (that was in June 2015), this was the about first thing that @slackbot had suggested to me. In 2 days after signing up I got this message:
Psst… Aleksey! Right now you’re getting notified every time something is posted to Slack. That's great at first, but now that activity is increasing you'll probably prefer dialing that down. We recommend notifications just for mentions and DMs (i.e., only when someone wants your attention).
[Switch to our recommended settings]
So, they're doing this already.
("The activity is increasing" part was a lie, though - they don't measure the activity or notification frequency at all, as I was the only user somewhat alive.)
Yeah, this is how I set it up. Should be a default, as it is more sane to only be notified when you are addressed.
Also, more complex conversations should "go somewhere else", whether that's github issues, a Google doc, or a Skype call.
Basecamp tries to be an all in one solution, which means that it's probably not as good as Slack for group chat, and not as good as Google Docs for document editing etc.
The defaults are sensible. Tags for you specifically, or private messages, show up noisily. Messages to a group show up subtly, but not completely invisibly. Bolded rooms should be normal; the green (1)s should be reserved for the truly urgent things.
The defaults may be sensible to you, but they're not for me and not for the OP. Bold is "important"--perhaps they could consider a subtle change of text color or even italics instead of LOOK AT ME I AM BRIGHT WHITE AND BOLD. And having any badges in my Dock is completely unusual to me to the point where it's an automatic reflex to look at them.
I can, and do, modify the default settings, but I contend that, for me, the defaults are inhumane and I wish we as a tech culture would stop with these proclamation-from-on-high denials of potential issues just because they don't scratch the proclaimer's itch.
The red dot icon for unread activity is a default I find non-sensible. When the team is a few dozen plus, seeing the badge every 1-5 minutes is incredibly distracting.
Comments
I think Slack really needs to tweak their default notification settings. Before you know what you're doing you end up with an anxiety-inducing list of bolded room names after you've been away from your machine for 10 minutes.
Or maybe they shouldn't have defaults - when you join a room it should ask you how you want to be notified. Since I've set 90% of the rooms I'm in to "muted until someone @s me" I've found it to be a much better experience, but setting that up was a pain.
I don't use Slack, but when I tried it (that was in June 2015), this was the about first thing that @slackbot had suggested to me. In 2 days after signing up I got this message:
So, they're doing this already.
("The activity is increasing" part was a lie, though - they don't measure the activity or notification frequency at all, as I was the only user somewhat alive.)
Yeah, this is how I set it up. Should be a default, as it is more sane to only be notified when you are addressed.
Also, more complex conversations should "go somewhere else", whether that's github issues, a Google doc, or a Skype call.
Basecamp tries to be an all in one solution, which means that it's probably not as good as Slack for group chat, and not as good as Google Docs for document editing etc.
The defaults are sensible. Tags for you specifically, or private messages, show up noisily. Messages to a group show up subtly, but not completely invisibly. Bolded rooms should be normal; the green (1)s should be reserved for the truly urgent things.
The defaults may be sensible to you, but they're not for me and not for the OP. Bold is "important"--perhaps they could consider a subtle change of text color or even italics instead of LOOK AT ME I AM BRIGHT WHITE AND BOLD. And having any badges in my Dock is completely unusual to me to the point where it's an automatic reflex to look at them.
I can, and do, modify the default settings, but I contend that, for me, the defaults are inhumane and I wish we as a tech culture would stop with these proclamation-from-on-high denials of potential issues just because they don't scratch the proclaimer's itch.
That's where I disagree, particularly as it shows up with a red dot next to the app in my dock. Makes it seem far more urgent than it actually is.
This red dot notification badge is maddening in a team of 20+. It should default to off.
They have added the option to disable it:
The red dot icon for unread activity is a default I find non-sensible. When the team is a few dozen plus, seeing the badge every 1-5 minutes is incredibly distracting.
On Android the default is to push-notify on every message in a room. This is not sensible at all.
I wish you could get rid of the default channels, so everything has more of a point. #general basically always becomes a garbage dump.
At our company, we renamed it #announcements and made it so only admins could post there.
This is super true. My first act on any new Slack is to disable notifications globally, then re-enable them for channels I care about.