Now don't get me wrong, I love Slack. But do I need to be on 22 teams?

I have to admit that I am guilty of some of this. I have participated in creating a few communities on Slack. I suppose I just didn't realize how many other folks were making similar choices and further siloing the discussions.

Can we get back to having some decent forums online, or will we be reduced to hiding valuable information and knowledge behind non-crawl-able walls and making it harder to find?‬

Must be subject ourselves to answering the same questions over and over again in an IRC chat, or can we have an epic thread that stays updated with the latest info in a forum.

Do we have to watch our veterans in the community leave because the conversation always reverts to basics? Or can we find a way to have community and value that people of various tenure find value in?

Can we for once lose the @everyone tag? We don’t all need to know that you haven’t looked at the pinned messages.

There has got to be a return to sanity.

The reason people feel compelled to share their help and expertise (and continue to do so over a long period of time), has to do with karma. We feel like if we help someone, we may get some help in the long run. But it isn’t pure altruism. I think there is a part of each of us that hopes that when we help another person, that those folks, and others will remember that and recognize that and we will gain a little bit of “street cred”.

In Slack, the here and now is the only thing that most people will see. It might as well be a real-time chat room. If you aren’t in there live… then well… you missed the discussion.

I don’t think that innovation builds that way. We can only build on knowledge that is shared and documented. The Slack model for community experience for “user groups” and “industry groups” is flawed.