Products · Product
Confluence
Raised as a usability problem by 217 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 136 threads.
- 1Slow enough to become unusableUnreviewed
- 1Slow enough to become unusableUnreviewed
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- 1Slow enough to become unusableUnreviewed
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Slow enough to become unusableUnreviewed
20082026- Pages take up to 15 seconds to load and become usable2026-11-03
- Confluence is bloated and unwieldy to work with2026-10-16
- Bloated website takes about 20 seconds to go from idea to written note2026-05-14
Search results are poor and hard to rely onUnreviewed
20082026- Built-in search returns poor results, so pages are hard to find2026-03-01
- Search is hard to use because people must guess the exact query wording2024-11-18
- Search is so poor the commenter can never find anything2024-11-17
Search misses pages even when the exact title is typedUnreviewed
20082026- Keyword search returns no relevant results even for documents that contain the keyword2026-04-20
- Search fails to find exact document titles, so users navigate manually instead2023-09-22
- Search fails to find pages the user knows exist2023-06-27
Wiki markup syntax removed, making formatting harderUnreviewed
20082026- Competing wikis have awful UI/UX, and XWiki fails at simultaneous table editing2026-08-05
- Three incompatible wiki markup parsers produce inconsistent results, worse than Markdown2022-06-30
- Editor removed wiki markup syntax, making fixes and formatting harder for users2021-02-22
Outdated company documentation hides accurate informationUnreviewed
20082026- Documentation is hard to find, edit and keep up to date2023-08-17
- Nearly impossible to find documentation or anything else2022-06-30
- Company documentation is outdated, so people can't find accurate information2021-09-27
Pasted tables get garbled, keystrokes jump, and undo is unpredictableUnreviewed
20082026- Keystrokes take multiple seconds to register in the editor2022-01-13
- Editor garbles pasted tables, random keystrokes jump, and undo behaves unpredictably2015-11-24
- Tab and enter keys behave inconsistently, the editor freezes browser, forces mouse use2012-05-22
Moving pages is hard, so content gets disorganisedUnreviewed
20082026- Slow, clunky editing and poor search; moving pages is hard so content gets disorganized2020-10-18
- Pages with many macros become nearly impossible to edit due to slowness2020-07-12
- Slow page loads, buggy draft saving, can't copy-paste, clunky commenting2019-08-27
Complex organisation makes finding anything hardUnreviewed
20082026- Hard to find things; thousands of pages fall out of maintenance due to weak organization2022-01-08
- Poor search and complex organization make it hard to find anything2017-11-06
- Search is poor and page organization is a messy, hard-to-navigate structure2017-09-08
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Pages take up to 15 seconds to load and become usable2026-11-03
- Confluence is bloated and unwieldy to work with2026-10-16
- Competing wikis have awful UI/UX, and XWiki fails at simultaneous table editing2026-08-05
- Collaboration platforms create high friction, so the author stopped sharing documentation publicly2026-07-21
- Bloated website takes about 20 seconds to go from idea to written note2026-05-14
- Keyword search returns no relevant results even for documents that contain the keyword2026-04-20
- Input fields misbehave and markdown handling is broken, so text entry doesn't work well2026-04-20
- Tables lack sorting and filtering options, so users can't organise their data2026-03-12
- Built-in search returns poor results, so pages are hard to find2026-03-01
- Fights formatting, bulleted lists go wrong, and documents can't be found later2025-12-28
- AI buttons sit near scroll bar and save, popups appear on any text selection, cluttering the editor2025-10-26
- Knowledge base tools are too slow, unintuitive, unfocused and cluttered2025-10-22
- Constantly fighting the formatting in the WYSIWYG editor2025-09-11
- Putting an image into a document and then moving it is infuriating2025-08-04
- Can't find the fill colour button because all icons look alike2025-05-27
- Runbook steps require manually copy-pasting commands and queries between tools2025-04-23
- Confluence is extremely slow to interact with2025-03-16
- Search is hard to use because people must guess the exact query wording2024-11-18
- Can't search document contents, and even title searches fail, so people rely on bookmarks2024-11-18
- Search is so poor the commenter can never find anything2024-11-17
- Finding the right page means drilling down from a root page, with slow loads2024-09-04
- Old versions of pages are hard to find and track changes in2024-09-03
- Feels bloated and confusing to use overall2024-08-14
- Buggy, clunky editor makes updating docs painful for anyone trying2024-08-01
- Confluence pages display slowly and feel laggy2024-06-30
- Confluence has many quirks and silly dysfunctional behaviors that frustrate the commenter2024-06-30
- API page editing is so cumbersome that it is basically useless2024-06-30
- Confluence is slow to use, frustrating the commenter's team daily2024-06-29
- Some text blocks on wiki pages cannot be selected, making copying and browser search hard2024-03-08
- Backtick monospace formatting fails silently; fixing requires retyping both backticks2023-11-03
- Pop-up dialogue keeps interrupting reading each time someone comments on a page2023-11-01
- Search results are cluttered with irrelevant old meeting notes, hard to find information2023-10-24
- Can't import markdown, and numbered lists must restart when continued across items2023-10-16
- Commenter finds Confluence frustrating to use and stays with it reluctantly2023-10-13
- Search fails to find exact document titles, so users navigate manually instead2023-09-22
- Documentation is hard to find, edit and keep up to date2023-08-17
- Search fails to find pages the user knows exist2023-06-27
- No access to plain text source for pages, which is infuriating2023-06-27
- Search fails to find the documents the user is looking for2023-05-31
- Forces developers into a tool that is a hassle to use for docs2023-04-15
- Search fails to find pages the user knows exist, and navigation is unintuitive2023-03-09
- Search defaults to OR between terms, so results are irrelevant unless the user adds AND2023-03-08
- Performance is slow and the overall user experience feels sad and frustrating2023-03-07
- Users struggle to know where to look for documentation in Confluence2023-02-17
- Editing a page triggers emails to everyone watching it, flooding inboxes2023-02-10
- Search fails to find documents, even ones the user previously opened2023-01-27
- Search is abysmal and hard to get useful results from2022-11-23
- Known pages can't be found through search even with exact title or content2022-11-23
- Search matches only whole words, so results seem wrong unless users add wildcards2022-11-23
- Overwhelming for newcomers and unintuitive; users hit limits quickly without customisation2022-11-23