Folks, we're trialing something new. We're uses li...

# announcements

[hhariri]

Folks, we're trialing something new. We're uses linen.dev to index and make the entire public contents of this Slack searchable. Linen.dev displays this in a forum style format grouping conversations that are threaded. This allows folks to more easily find the amazing amount of information in this wonderful Slack community. Please let us know your thoughts. If it works out well, we'll move it to a domain under kotlinlang.org.

Please note that it only indexes (and only has access to) public channels. Private channels and conversations are not accessible.

Here's the link. https://www.linen.dev/s/kotlinlang

[Colton Idle]

Next stop... we'll just end up using phpbb forums. 😂

This is actually really awesome though. so much invaluable info lives in this slack. thanks to whoever started this effort.

[hhariri]

Kudos to @Sebastian Aigner for the idea.

[Michael Paus]

But I am missing all the compose channels. Are they not considered public?

[hhariri]

It's still in the process. We'll keep an eye on it.

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

Yeah it looks like there's some channels missing, like #CQ3GFJTU1 and #C7L3JB43G

[Landry Norris]

I don’t know much about linen, but will we be able to post from the site in the future, once everything is set up, or will we always have to come back to Slack to type a new message or respond?

[hhariri]

The idea is that this is read-only. I don't believe they have immediate plans to post from site.

[Endre Deak]

I guess the main idea to provide access to the knowledge without the necessity of joining to the workspace..?

[hhariri]

Yes. And make it easily searchable.

[Oliver.O]

Excellent idea, as there are so many amazing people ❤️ contributing to this Slack.

I like to think that Linen is an intermediate step. In the end, it'll all run on Ktor infrastructure with cute Compose frontends on Web/Desktop/Android/iOS. 😉

[Amanda Martin]

Really great! I have been looking for a solution like this for a while. Might have to try it out! Thanks!

[Stylianos Gakis]

All the knowledge that exists here is super valuable, this move is very smart!

[hhariri]

@Oliver.O As tempting as it is, I think that would put us in the NIH camp (again?), and honestly if Linen.dev do a good job, it would be great to support them.

[zaleslaw]

Please add #C01DZU7PW73 and #C4W52CFEZ channels

[hhariri]

All channels should be added, but it’s taking some time.

[kqr]

as far as I understand, this will require more moderation/editing on slack side, to force correct usage of threads. I mean not just warn people to use threads but move messages under thread

[hhariri]

@kqr But that can only be a good thing right? 🙂

[kqr]

sure, if there is will and ability to do so. I don't know what moderation tools are available on slack

[kqr]

btw I've noticed, that deleted root messages are there, probably they should be filtered out?

[hhariri]

Yes. Noticed this too. I’ve talked to them to see if they plan to remove them.

[Oliver.O]

@hhariri Your objection is well founded, of course. (We tend to agree on so many things, it almost scares me. 🤣) Stick to dev tools and let Linen discover the value of Ktor at some point, if they haven't already. 😉

[Oliver.O]

@kqr If only Slack could offer some guidance to users like "hey, you are about to post that million line code block in a channel message, let's move that into a side thread, so that mobile users can survive".

[hhariri]

@Oliver.O 🙂 That’s something I was actually going to look in to, but the issue is Slack doesn’t really know if it’s a new post or a response, so don’t think it would be viable 😕.

[Oliver.O]

I guess Slack would have to change their UI to do that. And not just new posts, but also thread responses marked with "also post to the channel" should be accepted only within certain size limits. That would improve quality without consuming moderator bandwidth.

[Oliver.O]

And we're probably discussing two different issues here: One is posts that are too long to put directly into a channel. These should have a teaser in the channel with details in a thread. The other is replies that accidentally end up as a new channel post. The latter is a UI design issue: Slack invites new posts and almost completely hides the reply option. That needs to be balanced out, for example, by making replies more affordable visually, or via some assistance like "If this is a reply to some other post, please select which one".

[Joffrey]

It looks like their formatting is not 100% respectful of how Slack interprets things. Not sure if it is markdown-based but it sure doesn't end up the same way. For instance, my response just below a quote ended up being displayed as part of the quote on linen.dev:

[louiscad]

Would be great to let them know

[Joffrey]

Yes, but I didn't find a proper way to report issues via a quick search. The only thing I found was a support email [e-mail]. @hhariri how did you report the other issues so far?

[hhariri]

I'm in touch with them directly. I think they did join this Slack too. Will check.

[Kam Leung]

Hi all I’m the author of Linen.dev I’m in the channel you can at me or even email directly at [e-mail] if you have any feedback about Linen or any thoughts on Slack/Discord communities in general

[Kam Leung]

@Joffrey The parsing is a bug on our end will fix sometime early this week.

[Kam Leung]

The channels not showing up issue is a bug on our end. Kotlinlang is the biggest community we’ve synced so far and has 530 channels we aren’t paginating through all of the channels since all the other communities has been under 100. Will push the fix and kick off the sync again will most likely be done in 2-3 days depending on how long the sync takes. (Slack has api rate limits so it takes a little bit)

[Kam Leung]

Sync should be completed! We’re working on improving the performance so if you see slow first page loads. We’re working on improving the experience so you should see improvements by end of the week.

[Michael Paus]

Is there any way to hide all the channels I am not interested in?

[Kam Leung]

@Michael Paus Not yet. We don’t support any login or accounts so we don’t have a way to hide it. But we have a few features that are on the roadmap that might be interesting.

[Michael Paus]

Wouldn’t some light-weight favourites be possible via simple cookies?