+3!!! I find this is the single most annoying "feature" of mattermost. To me it's a bug. If a channel is "public" let it be viewed/searched by any user without requiring them to "join" the channel first. Search should be a tool you can use to find channels you are interested in joining. It defeats the purpose if you can only search channels you've already joined.
That said, I think the main issue is not that you have to join a channel to view/search it, but that joining a channel spams all members of the channel with a join message. Does anyone care to be notified when someone joins a public channel? Our users certainly don't. The simplest solution to this would be a global setting to disable or hide join/leave messages for public channels, or a setting on each channel to disable/hide join/leave messages. I know there's a setting for each user to hide these messages but that doesn't prevent spamming most users who aren't even aware of this setting. It should be a global or channel setting. It still wouldn't solve the search issue, but it would be a good start.
Rob
+3!!! I find this is the single most annoying "feature" of mattermost. To me it's a bug. If a channel is "public" let it be viewed/searched by any user without requiring them to "join" the channel first. Search should be a tool you can use to find channels you are interested in joining. It defeats the purpose if you can only search channels you've already joined.
That said, I think the main issue is not that you have to join a channel to view/search it, but that joining a channel spams all members of the channel with a join message. Does anyone care to be notified when someone joins a public channel? Our users certainly don't. The simplest solution to this would be a global setting to disable or hide join/leave messages for public channels, or a setting on each channel to disable/hide join/leave messages. I know there's a setting for each user to hide these messages but that doesn't prevent spamming most users who aren't even aware of this setting. It should be a global or channel setting. It still wouldn't solve the search issue, but it would be a good start.