Disclaimer: I work at Slack. Yeah, search could be better sometimes. But for this particular problem, I personally find search useful in two contexts:
* Even if I can't remember the exact phrasing I used for something, I often remember the person I discussed it with and just check my DMs or threads with them.
* Half of my responses to "help me" questions include links to repos in files. So I search for the last time I typed out three paragraphs talking about a a given link and that works pretty well.
The other situation "type it out" is useful is when I think a particular problem is likely to be encountered by multiple people and essentially force someone to ask the question in a public channel so I can answer it there and everyone can see it (we have channels like and #new-eng-questions for this). Even if people don't find it via search, there are enough people checking the recent history of these channels that it's a useful exercise.
The other situation "type it out" is useful is when I think a particular problem is likely to be encountered by multiple people and essentially force someone to ask the question in a public channel so I can answer it there and everyone can see it
Agreed. Assuming it's the kind of question that's amenable to being answered in text-exchange format in the first place. I've gotten plenty of Teams / Slack messages where my response was "Can you ask this in the public team chat, so everybody can see it?" for that exact reason. That and it also opens up the pool of people who can potentially answer the question to more than just me, which is also a Good Thing.
But there are still plenty of questions where it quickly becomes apparent that having a call with screen-sharing and everything is going to be a much more efficient way of solving the problem at hand.
* Even if I can't remember the exact phrasing I used for something, I often remember the person I discussed it with and just check my DMs or threads with them.
* Half of my responses to "help me" questions include links to repos in files. So I search for the last time I typed out three paragraphs talking about a a given link and that works pretty well.
The other situation "type it out" is useful is when I think a particular problem is likely to be encountered by multiple people and essentially force someone to ask the question in a public channel so I can answer it there and everyone can see it (we have channels like and #new-eng-questions for this). Even if people don't find it via search, there are enough people checking the recent history of these channels that it's a useful exercise.