As Slack gets criticism from power users for its WYSIWYG editor and plans an option to revert, a look at the history of Markdown, used by Slack's old interface
Ernie Smith / VICE : Tweets: @alexislloyd , @vice , @artemr , @shortformernie , @katienotopoulos , @carnage4life , and @wongmjane Tweets: Alexis Lloyd / @alexislloyd : It's been fascinating to hear everyone's take on the slack text editor. Personally, I think adding formatting tools implies a formality of communication that seems at odds with the intent of the software. Feels like way too much cognitive overhead for chat. https://twitter.com/... @vice : UPDATE: Slack has decided to bring back Markdown. https://www.vice.com/... Artem Russakovskii / @artemr : Oh boy, the new WYSIWYG editor @SlackHQ forced on everyone doesn't do well with pasting code, and I'm wondering wtf they were thinking shipping the product in such a state, after supposedly doing user testing.
Context & Ripple Effects
Slack has spent years pulling chat toward document territory — its Posts revamp in 2015 was an explicit bid to compete with email on long-form messages — and the new WYSIWYG editor extends that same instinct down into everyday messages. Power users revolted anyway, with pasted code breaking and Alexis Lloyd among those arguing that formatting tools add formality and cognitive overhead at odds with chat's intent.
The VICE piece frames the fight through Markdown, the plain-text syntax John Gruber quietly launched in 2004 that Slack's old interface ran on and that the industry has since adopted broadly (its history traced here). Facing the backlash, Slack committed to bringing Markdown back and to offering a revert option — a rare public retreat on a core input surface.
First-order effects
- Power users get their workaround: Slack restores Markdown support and plans a toggle to revert to the old editor, directly answering complaints about broken code pasting.
Second-order effects
- The episode hands Slack's rivals a playbook contrast — Microsoft Teams' chat surface gets cited in later comparisons — and pushes Slack toward shipping preferences rather than one-way defaults when it changes core editing UX.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, power-user communities function as a veto bloc over interface changes in collaboration software, and plain-text formats like Markdown persist underneath GUI editors because expert users keep demanding them — a dynamic visible again in Slack's 2023 redesign pitched as catering to power users.
The trend: Collaboration tools keep layering document-style formatting onto chat, then walk it back under pressure from the power users whose workflows depend on plain-text conventions like Markdown.