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Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

99 points by sendilkumarn 5y ago

Qem 5y ago
The etiquette tip I'd like to see adopted for most collaboration software is: "Don't be the cam psychopath!". By cam psychopath I mean, people that are constantly pestering and complaining about their subordinates/colleagues that don't like to keep their cam open in meetings.
multiplegeorges 5y ago
> Less messages means more efficient collaboration I think this should be "Fewer messages...". Good grammar improves communication, as well.
- LesZedCB 5y ago
  if it was good enough to get the idea across in order to be corrected, it succeeded. grammar is fake. language is made up, didn't you know? pithy response aside, i work with a lot of ESL international folks, caring about grammar comes _way_ after being gracious in communication. edit: also, period goes inside quote, even with ellipses. https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses. secondly, the extra comma before "as well" is unecessary. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/231256/can-i-put-a-comma-before-as-well https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/231256/can-i-put...
  - triyambakam 5y ago
    > also, period goes inside quote Not in the UK
    - deleted 5y ago
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  - swilliamsio 5y ago
    > also, period goes inside quote According to Wikipedia, it very much depends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Punctuation_inside_or_outside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Punc...
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - deleted 5y ago
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  - krageon 5y ago
    > https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses You quote a US website for this, but we're talking about English.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  If "less" is used more often than "fewer", doesn't that mean these fairly arbitrary grammar rules should be updated? Language evolves, after all, and American English has diverged from UK English a long time ago.
kome 5y ago
Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack: use email. - "1. Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.", write longer messages -> use email. - "2. "Write longer messages that scan quickly" -> don't use a chat app for your messages, use email. - "3. Use threads for effective team collaboration. Seriously." -> use a mailing list. - "4. Replace short follow-up messages with emoji reactions" -> don't do anything when it's not needed. - "5. Reduce off-hours pings with Do Not Disturb" -> set up a mail responder. etc etc
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  >Replace short follow-up messages with emoji reactions" -> don't do anything when it's not needed. I feel compelled to thank people after they've helped me. Thank you emails feel burdensome. Emoji responses are a happy medium. (You don't get notifications from emoji responses right? I've never used Slack)
- tallanvor 5y ago
  I hate emoji reactions. I understand that not everybody will view them the same way, but to me they're phony - if I've helped you, say thanks - don't send a thumbs up emoji. And recognize that in large group settings, maybe a response isn't necessary - I'm sure a lot of people get annoyed by the flood of "thanks!" "good bye" and such messages that get sent at the end of large meetings.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    A large number of “thanks” or “agree” messages just add noise and get mixed in with other messages. The emoji reactions are concise and targeted. At minimum they acknowledge receipt of the message. I do a lot of work with people who are not working at the same time I am so keeping communications clear and contained is helpful.
joseph8th 5y ago
At risk of repeating what everyone else has said... My PM does the "Hey" thing. I do not multitask. I'm a serial tasker. So I turned off all notifications on Slack. The only way I know I have a message is the red dot that appears in the panel icon. Now, it's async again. When I even glance up to see if there are new messages... Red dot or no red dot
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  If they only say "Hey" with no follow-up, I'll just assume it was nothing and they got distracted. In smaller environments it could work to link them to e.g. https://nohello.net/en/ https://nohello.net/en/ and / or educate them though. But turning off notifications works; it keeps your focus, and making them wait for a reply trains and reminds them that it's asynchronous communication. A lot of people have grown accustomed to fast replies though.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Your assumption may be wrong though. Especially if you work internationally, the greeting ritual may be a form of civil courtesy. I do hate it though. Just ask the damn question, don't wait for me to say "hey" back.
    - chousuke 5y ago
      I wish we could just get rid of that particular form of "courtesy". I can't help but be annoyed or distracted by naked hellos, regardless of the intent behind them, so to me, they are rude. I understand that they might be some sort of social ritual, but I can't for the life of me understand how it's in any way courteous to ask for someone's attention with an expectation of a synchronous reply before revealing anything about why they want your attention. But I suppose the majority feels the opposite for some unfathomable reason.
      - fleddr 5y ago
        It's a misuse of tools indeed. It's something to do on the phone, not in a (supposedly) asynchronous communication tool. But hey, some people even use email synchronously. I tried to punish the naked hello senders, by simply not responding at all. If you can't be bothered to tell me why you need me, I can't be bothered to respond. Unfortunately, empathy broke it. I work with a lot of remote workers in India. They make long hours and I know they need something from me, I just don't know what. By intentionally not responding, I feel bad about effectively sabotaging progress.
nxpnsv 5y ago
It sure would be nice if I could drag replies that went out of thread into a thread...
Dave3of5 5y ago
https://nohello.net/en/ https://nohello.net/en/
abridgett 5y ago
Some of these are pasting over product weaknesses: - inability to change private channels to public "as you might accidentally reveal secret info". Yes, but that's _my_ decision, not Slacks. - more than 1 or 2 active threads/channels is extremely painful and very easy to lose your way - whilst search is good, finding a thread from just a day or so ago can be very difficult (especially when there are many channels) - abuse of @here, @channel - this only seems controllable at a workspace or org level, not a per-channel level. Yes, email and ticket systems have drawbacks, however slack is almost an anti-knowledge base in it's current state.
- dewey 5y ago
  > however slack is almost an anti-knowledge base in it's current state I know that Slack isn't a replacement for some kind of knowledge base but the Slack search is incredibly powerful and I'm answering questions by using the search almost every day.
donatj 5y ago
> Use threads for effective team collaboration. Seriously. Threads are where messages go to die. I don’t have time to read every single thread clicking into it individually. You’re just making work for me, having to figure out what threads I have to read. If it’s in a thread and no one @‘d me, assume I missed it. I read very quickly, I just want to be able to scan all messages in a channel chronologically. My team begrudgingly moved over from an IRC server about two years ago to the larger corporations Slack and have actively avoided threads in our spaces. What they should add is an optional unrolled thread view where people can use threads but we can still get the whole thing as a single non-hierarchical timeline I can just scroll, akin to how Signal does replying to specific messages.
- tomtom1337 5y ago
  Your suggestion is a really good one. We have channels with several hundred people in it, and there threads are a must. In the smaller team channels I often reply out-of-thread, since it doesn't matter.
- stavros 5y ago
  Slack's threads design feels like they don't want you to use them. They take a small fraction of the screen, they're awkward to find, and they're awkward to keep open. Zulip has gotten the entire chat thing entirely right, yet Slack continues to treat the most important unit of conversation (the thread) as a fourth-class citizen.
- troyvit 5y ago
  I went from a company of 900 people to a company of 80 and wow what a difference. There was so much noise in the larger company that I'd spend probably 2 hours a day reading slacks (and they rarely threaded messages even). Fast forward to here and it's like a breath of fresh air. They're very conscious about threading and while I now have time to read every thread I can tell at a glance if I should. Doesn't really help your problem except to say that assiduous threading does seem to make it easier at a certain scale to know which messages to ignore.
ss108 5y ago
The suggestion to use emojis gratuitously and frivolously to break up text is a joke right? Meant to go in an April 1 blog post? Those kinds of messages/posts strike me as parodic and obnoxious.
- ajkjk 5y ago
  Of course it's not.
orf 5y ago
hi, can I leave a comment?
jawns 5y ago
Most important Slack etiquette ... Don't @channel large channels after hours!
- barrucadu 5y ago
  While @channel is generally rude (unless it's something really urgent, and even then that's better solved by having one person specifically be interruptible for urgent questions), it's even better to just not check Slack after hours.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    When is “after hours”? I check and respond during my work hours. It is likely to be “after hours” for some members of the team. I am sending this now so that they will see it when they come online. I do not expect them to respond 24/7 and will often mention that I’m looking for an answer “by tomorrow” to set expectations. And no, I don’t use @channel, though once in a while I will use @here if the priority is high.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Don't @channel large channels ever.
- gkoberger 5y ago
  Slack has a really nice popup that blocks this from happening by mistake, and confirms you really want to do it. (Also, @here is a great alternative because it only notifies people actively on Slack.)
  - bombcar 5y ago
    It would be nice if there was something like @eventually for everyone in the channel the next time they get on or similar.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      Isn't that just the 'unread' marker? I mean if it's imperative that everyone reads it, just send an e-mail instead or keep a non-interactive #announcements channel.
enriquto 5y ago
Basic etiquette would be to not force co-workers to use Slack at all. And for that matter, any other proprietary network based on closed standards that do not admit connections from third-party clients. I'm forced to use Slack and Zoom from time to time for important work stuff, and it is extremely annoying and humiliating.
- gkoberger 5y ago
  This... is an insane take. It's "humiliating" for you to use the communication platform your company has chosen?
  - richm31415 5y ago
    It can be, yes. For someone who is a strong believer in and advocate of FOSS, who makes her/his livelihood developing FOSS for a FOSS software company, to be forced to use proprietary solutions where there are reasonable FOSS alternatives can be very disheartening, demoralizing, and even humiliating.
    - Melatonic 5y ago
      I am not sure still why it is humiliating specifically - disheartening sure, demoralizing makes sense. But why would it be humiliating if you are not the person pushing that the paid / non FLOSS app be used in the first place? Isn't this also a good chance to evangelize an alternative to whomever you are speaking with?
      - ask_b123 5y ago
        I also thought of that as being a chance to 'evangelize' FLOSS alternatives. The first thing I actually thought of was this set of verses talking about evangelizing in a somewhat similar context: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9%3A20-23 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9...
  - enriquto 5y ago
commandlinefan 5y ago
> Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.” I first started hearing people suggest this recently (within the past month or so). I never really understood why these message bothered people so much - they never bothered me and always actually seemed a bit more polite than just barreling forward with a question. But I guess if even Slack themselves are saying don't do that, it must really get on other people's nerves.
- watwut 5y ago
  "Hi, I have following question. Blah blah" is fine. But - Hi - <2 min pause and typing icon appears. I wait doing nothing or get to work> - I have a question about X. - <4 min pause and typing icon appears, as person struggles to write it. I wait doing nothing or get to work> And only after you get question. That was too much waiting idle, being interrupted and still not communicating.
- deleted 5y ago
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- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Well yeah, but if it's a quick question then it's just reading & replying once, it's a "hey" and you engage with it, it's a longer context switch. For both parties involved; the sender obviously has something they need you for, the faster they can have that issue resolved, the faster their context switch has finished.
- chestnuttrees 5y ago
  I think it’s actually pretty silly. The same people demanding you no-hello them (that is, try to enforce a social solution on everyone else to solve something they can easily solve technically) will also tell you to e.g. use an as blocker, or go on about Postel’s law. If a random slack message is going to ruin your concentration, that’s a you problem. Fix it on your end. I agree, it doesn’t especially bother me. But if I don’t want notifications, I mute them. I don’t demand other people accommodate my inability to manage my own attention.
- accrual 5y ago
27182818284 5y ago
> Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.” The corner of the page: "Hey friend, got a minute to chat" ha!
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  That's not the gotcha you think it is; it's not just "hey", it's an actionable question.
  - chockchocschoir 5y ago
    No, they're the same. Although here used in different contexts (trying to start a sync conversation VS marketing trying to get you to sign up for something), but they are effectively saying the same thing, "I need a minute from you for X".
  - fleddr 5y ago
    It's still poor etiquette as it lacks basic context. Chat about what? Something important? The weather? What is the urgency/priority?
maccard 5y ago
> Write longer messages that scan quickly I like this one. I'm an emoji fan, but understand that not everyone else is. It boils down to "spend time crafting a message that contains the correct information" or even more succinctly "respect other people's time". There's nothing worse than a giant wall of text with all the pertinent information buried in the middle of it.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  Takes time to be concise: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ It's a trade off between comprehension and ease of distillation made easier if you know your audience well. If you take the time to ease comprehension then ALL who read it save time. But how much of your time will save how much of theirs?
  - maccard 5y ago
    > But how much of your time will save how much of theirs? There's definitely a tradeoff to be had here, and it's up to you to decide. I err on the side of over-editing in work/professional communications (and likely under-editing on social media), out of courtesy for the people reading what I'm saying!
kyleblarson 5y ago
Another tip that vastly improves mental health as well as efficiency: turn off all notifications from slack, especially that damn broom sound.
- nishs 5y ago
  that broom sound is the worst. compare this to the sounds available on apple systems. in the directory /System/Library/Sounds: Funk, Morse, Blow.
_moof 5y ago
> …the recipient gets a notification on that first “hey” that contains no information and potentially causes distraction. The person might see the indicator that you’re typing but is still left waiting for your full message. I would turn this around and call this a product design problem. Maybe Slack shouldn't send a notification when all you've said is "hey" and you're typing a follow-up message. Really, if you have to publish a blog post explaining to people that they're using your product wrong, I'd say your product needs work.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  Teaching people to replace "<send>" with ", " is better than trying to design a filter for every salutation.
- paxys 5y ago
  Not every social problem needs to have a tech solution. Slack allows sending messages between people. They don't need to start policing the content of these messages.
npunt 5y ago
Rather than just tell / hope people follow some etiquette, I'd love Slack to build more etiquette enforcing features that operators could enable. This isn't the 19th century where the best we can do is tell people to read a book on etiquette and hope for the best. Slack is in a unique position in the history of interpersonal communication where they have complete insight into (and design of) user's and organization's preferences as well as the messages themselves. And the medium is text, which is the easiest to analyze and provide feedback on. Some examples of what they could do, broadly captured in a 'Etiquette Features' preference set by the organization: 1. Never say 'hey' - if a user writes this, explain the etiquette and rationale for it and suggest they write a whole ass message instead, but optionally let the user just send it. 2. Make long messages scan easily - not too difficult for a computer to tell a long block of unformatted text. Great time to introduce the etiquette scaffold. 3. Use threads - a trickier one to suggest when people are typing, but likely some obvious response patterns (who & when messages are sent) that could trigger a etiquette scaffold asking to put this message in the thread if messages are similar enough to the thread's contents. 4. Short followups as emojis - orgs should be able to define clear meaning of response emojis that are visualized to everyone in the UI when selecting them (check means complete, question mark means need more info, etc). Short responses also likely have a pattern that could trigger a 'do you mean 'this is done'?' kind of scaffold, which would fill in emoji instead 6. Channel response expectations - a tiny text label is insufficient to set expectations, as are pinned messages. At the very least visualize timezones of participants, and when writing an @message to someone in a channel, if they're off-hours let the sender know that up front. All our communications tools favor low friction to send and devalue the recipients time (the phenomenon mentioned in Cal Newport's Deep Work), and Slack is a serious offender. There's a need for a higher friction, higher awareness path to send messages that better accounts for the full cost of such messages. Not every org would want/need this but it should absolutely be something a service like Slack offers.
- thecosas 5y ago
  It would be great to see Slack put some work in here, but could someone make an app (or Slackbot) to enforce/offer guidance? I know Slack culture can be hugely variable over time, especially for high-growth companies so there definitely needs to be some flexibility.
hamolton 5y ago
Agree with these takes. My company's system having the channel #eng-<team name>-lobby as a q/a forum for all teams has been incredible for spreading information, although I could imagine some cultures where it wouldn't work as well. The emojis they have for "Thank you" and "I'm looking into it" seem a bit ambiguous; my company has several "thank you" emotes, but nothing dedicated to the latter. Not sure what we should add.
- AndrewOMartin 5y ago
  At my place we use :eyes: for I'm looking at it, but feel free to also look, and a custom emoji of the word "onit" for I'm taking responsibility for it. There are also dedicated "thank you" and "done" emojis which feel great to see appear or to post, due to the unambiguous positive terminal message.
kerblang 5y ago
> Default to public channels for better workplace communication I have tried so hard to get people to do this, but it seems like a lot of my coworkers are honestly scared of "public" channels, and by "public" I mean a channel with only 15 or so people on it. They insist on DM'ing most things, and some just refuse to use chat at all; those will only communicate via email.
- gbjw 5y ago
  Sending a message in a public channel is psychologically akin to walking into a room full of people and just loudly proclaiming/demanding help. I don't think people are simply 'scared' to do it -- they just (rightly) intuit that it's somewhat strange and counterintuitive that it would be the preferred method over talking to an individual and building a rapport / friendship.
  - ge96 5y ago
    Also if you sound dumb it's out there for the public to see.
    - onion2k 5y ago
      It's the job of everyone on the team, especially leads, to reply in ways that make sure everyone knows asking a dumb question is significantly better than being blocked. I would prefer to answer dumb questions all day long than have people on my team grind to a halt for a day because they're scared of asking for help.
      - ge96 5y ago
        Yeah that is a good point, it's bad when you dump hours into something that could be figured out in a couple of minutes.
      - bhawks 5y ago
        But they're not blocked and they are asking for help. They're just doing it via DM instead of in the 'public' chat. Slack is literally telling folks: 'You are holding it wrong'. In reality their product isn't that great for q&a or knowledge sharing. Horrible search, bad notification, high noise to low signal.
ryanschneider 5y ago
My number one Slack tip is to use the All Unreads view (which for some reason needs to be enabled in preferences). Bonus tip: it’s not available on mobile which means I now basically never check Slack from my phone. I can’t decide if the Slack devs are hopelessly overworked or genius for _still_ not offering it on mobile. Check the time stamp: https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/798631873911980032 https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/798631873911980032
kkfx 5y ago
Being polite and cooperative it's a good thing, self-censorship is not and the least one who can write an "etiquette" is a proprietary platform. Sorry that's just a pathetic bland and casual push toward Chinese social score homogenization. Usenet netiquette, mail netiquette etc are not wrote by someone up front but slowly formed by a community of users out of their experience. My own personal etiquette for Slack is: "sorry I do not use proprietary platforms, seen no reason for them, we have emails, chats, etc choosing a deliberate security risk is not a good policy for a company, as a sysadmin I can't take responsibility for it and so I can't even use it".
- Tagbert 5y ago
  You must be fun to work with. Slack and similar are just tools. Caring about whether they are proprietary or not is lower down on the stack of priorities for most of us.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    Anything is just a tool, some are good tools, some (self/imposed)torture tools, some are just crappy tools pushed by ignorance that makes anything hard and inefficient, some are security threats etc. Personally I consider a third-party propritary digital communication tool a security threat on it's own, since the third party might audit anything and I can't tell if that's happen or not, that's why I classify similarly Slack, Zoom, Meet, Teams, O365 etc. I consider chat-based coms something useful in another era, when we can't just make VoIP calls, or still useful if you need to reach a remote ship or submarine via very expensive and limited sat/LF coms (classic telex), definitely wrong otherwise. My coms are simple: you need to reach me quickly? Call me, classic SIP/RTP. It's not urgent? Send me a mail, a plain text one with a romance quoted multiple times or a signature longer then the message itself. Try to be "more connected" means trying to be distracted and less productive. Need to send me files? I hope any company do have a decent DMS also for file sharing purposes. Need to share the screen? Ok, call me and we do etc. Right tool for the right job. About working with me practically: for most who know me it's not an issue, and my productivity tend to be far above the average, for newcomers seems not hyper-nice to start, but it's a short time period.
renewiltord 5y ago
Great tips. I think a reference is good for people who won't do things unless they have an authority to tell them.

99 points by sendilkumarn 5y ago

Qem 5y ago

The etiquette tip I'd like to see adopted for most collaboration software is: "Don't be the cam psychopath!". By cam psychopath I mean, people that are constantly pestering and complaining about their subordinates/colleagues that don't like to keep their cam open in meetings.

multiplegeorges 5y ago

> Less messages means more efficient collaboration I think this should be "Fewer messages...". Good grammar improves communication, as well.

LesZedCB 5y ago
if it was good enough to get the idea across in order to be corrected, it succeeded. grammar is fake. language is made up, didn't you know? pithy response aside, i work with a lot of ESL international folks, caring about grammar comes _way_ after being gracious in communication. edit: also, period goes inside quote, even with ellipses. https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses. secondly, the extra comma before "as well" is unecessary. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/231256/can-i-put-a-comma-before-as-well https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/231256/can-i-put...
- triyambakam 5y ago
  > also, period goes inside quote Not in the UK
  - deleted 5y ago
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- swilliamsio 5y ago
  > also, period goes inside quote According to Wikipedia, it very much depends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Punctuation_inside_or_outside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Punc...
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - deleted 5y ago
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- krageon 5y ago
  > https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses You quote a US website for this, but we're talking about English.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
If "less" is used more often than "fewer", doesn't that mean these fairly arbitrary grammar rules should be updated? Language evolves, after all, and American English has diverged from UK English a long time ago.

kome 5y ago

Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack: use email. - "1. Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.", write longer messages -> use email. - "2. "Write longer messages that scan quickly" -> don't use a chat app for your messages, use email. - "3. Use threads for effective team collaboration. Seriously." -> use a mailing list. - "4. Replace short follow-up messages with emoji reactions" -> don't do anything when it's not needed. - "5. Reduce off-hours pings with Do Not Disturb" -> set up a mail responder. etc etc

bobsmooth 5y ago
>Replace short follow-up messages with emoji reactions" -> don't do anything when it's not needed. I feel compelled to thank people after they've helped me. Thank you emails feel burdensome. Emoji responses are a happy medium. (You don't get notifications from emoji responses right? I've never used Slack)
tallanvor 5y ago
I hate emoji reactions. I understand that not everybody will view them the same way, but to me they're phony - if I've helped you, say thanks - don't send a thumbs up emoji. And recognize that in large group settings, maybe a response isn't necessary - I'm sure a lot of people get annoyed by the flood of "thanks!" "good bye" and such messages that get sent at the end of large meetings.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  A large number of “thanks” or “agree” messages just add noise and get mixed in with other messages. The emoji reactions are concise and targeted. At minimum they acknowledge receipt of the message. I do a lot of work with people who are not working at the same time I am so keeping communications clear and contained is helpful.

joseph8th 5y ago

At risk of repeating what everyone else has said... My PM does the "Hey" thing. I do not multitask. I'm a serial tasker. So I turned off all notifications on Slack. The only way I know I have a message is the red dot that appears in the panel icon. Now, it's async again. When I even glance up to see if there are new messages... Red dot or no red dot

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
If they only say "Hey" with no follow-up, I'll just assume it was nothing and they got distracted. In smaller environments it could work to link them to e.g. https://nohello.net/en/ https://nohello.net/en/ and / or educate them though. But turning off notifications works; it keeps your focus, and making them wait for a reply trains and reminds them that it's asynchronous communication. A lot of people have grown accustomed to fast replies though.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Your assumption may be wrong though. Especially if you work internationally, the greeting ritual may be a form of civil courtesy. I do hate it though. Just ask the damn question, don't wait for me to say "hey" back.
  - chousuke 5y ago
    I wish we could just get rid of that particular form of "courtesy". I can't help but be annoyed or distracted by naked hellos, regardless of the intent behind them, so to me, they are rude. I understand that they might be some sort of social ritual, but I can't for the life of me understand how it's in any way courteous to ask for someone's attention with an expectation of a synchronous reply before revealing anything about why they want your attention. But I suppose the majority feels the opposite for some unfathomable reason.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      It's a misuse of tools indeed. It's something to do on the phone, not in a (supposedly) asynchronous communication tool. But hey, some people even use email synchronously. I tried to punish the naked hello senders, by simply not responding at all. If you can't be bothered to tell me why you need me, I can't be bothered to respond. Unfortunately, empathy broke it. I work with a lot of remote workers in India. They make long hours and I know they need something from me, I just don't know what. By intentionally not responding, I feel bad about effectively sabotaging progress.

nxpnsv 5y ago

It sure would be nice if I could drag replies that went out of thread into a thread...

Dave3of5 5y ago

https://nohello.net/en/ https://nohello.net/en/

abridgett 5y ago

Some of these are pasting over product weaknesses: - inability to change private channels to public "as you might accidentally reveal secret info". Yes, but that's _my_ decision, not Slacks. - more than 1 or 2 active threads/channels is extremely painful and very easy to lose your way - whilst search is good, finding a thread from just a day or so ago can be very difficult (especially when there are many channels) - abuse of @here, @channel - this only seems controllable at a workspace or org level, not a per-channel level. Yes, email and ticket systems have drawbacks, however slack is almost an anti-knowledge base in it's current state.

dewey 5y ago
> however slack is almost an anti-knowledge base in it's current state I know that Slack isn't a replacement for some kind of knowledge base but the Slack search is incredibly powerful and I'm answering questions by using the search almost every day.

donatj 5y ago

> Use threads for effective team collaboration. Seriously. Threads are where messages go to die. I don’t have time to read every single thread clicking into it individually. You’re just making work for me, having to figure out what threads I have to read. If it’s in a thread and no one @‘d me, assume I missed it. I read very quickly, I just want to be able to scan all messages in a channel chronologically. My team begrudgingly moved over from an IRC server about two years ago to the larger corporations Slack and have actively avoided threads in our spaces. What they should add is an optional unrolled thread view where people can use threads but we can still get the whole thing as a single non-hierarchical timeline I can just scroll, akin to how Signal does replying to specific messages.

tomtom1337 5y ago
Your suggestion is a really good one. We have channels with several hundred people in it, and there threads are a must. In the smaller team channels I often reply out-of-thread, since it doesn't matter.
stavros 5y ago
Slack's threads design feels like they don't want you to use them. They take a small fraction of the screen, they're awkward to find, and they're awkward to keep open. Zulip has gotten the entire chat thing entirely right, yet Slack continues to treat the most important unit of conversation (the thread) as a fourth-class citizen.
troyvit 5y ago
I went from a company of 900 people to a company of 80 and wow what a difference. There was so much noise in the larger company that I'd spend probably 2 hours a day reading slacks (and they rarely threaded messages even). Fast forward to here and it's like a breath of fresh air. They're very conscious about threading and while I now have time to read every thread I can tell at a glance if I should. Doesn't really help your problem except to say that assiduous threading does seem to make it easier at a certain scale to know which messages to ignore.

ss108 5y ago

The suggestion to use emojis gratuitously and frivolously to break up text is a joke right? Meant to go in an April 1 blog post? Those kinds of messages/posts strike me as parodic and obnoxious.

ajkjk 5y ago
Of course it's not.

orf 5y ago

hi, can I leave a comment?

jawns 5y ago

Most important Slack etiquette ... Don't @channel large channels after hours!

barrucadu 5y ago
While @channel is generally rude (unless it's something really urgent, and even then that's better solved by having one person specifically be interruptible for urgent questions), it's even better to just not check Slack after hours.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  When is “after hours”? I check and respond during my work hours. It is likely to be “after hours” for some members of the team. I am sending this now so that they will see it when they come online. I do not expect them to respond 24/7 and will often mention that I’m looking for an answer “by tomorrow” to set expectations. And no, I don’t use @channel, though once in a while I will use @here if the priority is high.
TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Don't @channel large channels ever.
gkoberger 5y ago
Slack has a really nice popup that blocks this from happening by mistake, and confirms you really want to do it. (Also, @here is a great alternative because it only notifies people actively on Slack.)
- bombcar 5y ago
  It would be nice if there was something like @eventually for everyone in the channel the next time they get on or similar.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Isn't that just the 'unread' marker? I mean if it's imperative that everyone reads it, just send an e-mail instead or keep a non-interactive #announcements channel.

enriquto 5y ago

Basic etiquette would be to not force co-workers to use Slack at all. And for that matter, any other proprietary network based on closed standards that do not admit connections from third-party clients. I'm forced to use Slack and Zoom from time to time for important work stuff, and it is extremely annoying and humiliating.

gkoberger 5y ago
This... is an insane take. It's "humiliating" for you to use the communication platform your company has chosen?
- richm31415 5y ago
  It can be, yes. For someone who is a strong believer in and advocate of FOSS, who makes her/his livelihood developing FOSS for a FOSS software company, to be forced to use proprietary solutions where there are reasonable FOSS alternatives can be very disheartening, demoralizing, and even humiliating.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    I am not sure still why it is humiliating specifically - disheartening sure, demoralizing makes sense. But why would it be humiliating if you are not the person pushing that the paid / non FLOSS app be used in the first place? Isn't this also a good chance to evangelize an alternative to whomever you are speaking with?
    - ask_b123 5y ago
      I also thought of that as being a chance to 'evangelize' FLOSS alternatives. The first thing I actually thought of was this set of verses talking about evangelizing in a somewhat similar context: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9%3A20-23 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9...
- enriquto 5y ago

commandlinefan 5y ago

> Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.” I first started hearing people suggest this recently (within the past month or so). I never really understood why these message bothered people so much - they never bothered me and always actually seemed a bit more polite than just barreling forward with a question. But I guess if even Slack themselves are saying don't do that, it must really get on other people's nerves.

watwut 5y ago
"Hi, I have following question. Blah blah" is fine. But - Hi - <2 min pause and typing icon appears. I wait doing nothing or get to work> - I have a question about X. - <4 min pause and typing icon appears, as person struggles to write it. I wait doing nothing or get to work> And only after you get question. That was too much waiting idle, being interrupted and still not communicating.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Well yeah, but if it's a quick question then it's just reading & replying once, it's a "hey" and you engage with it, it's a longer context switch. For both parties involved; the sender obviously has something they need you for, the faster they can have that issue resolved, the faster their context switch has finished.
chestnuttrees 5y ago
I think it’s actually pretty silly. The same people demanding you no-hello them (that is, try to enforce a social solution on everyone else to solve something they can easily solve technically) will also tell you to e.g. use an as blocker, or go on about Postel’s law. If a random slack message is going to ruin your concentration, that’s a you problem. Fix it on your end. I agree, it doesn’t especially bother me. But if I don’t want notifications, I mute them. I don’t demand other people accommodate my inability to manage my own attention.
accrual 5y ago

27182818284 5y ago

> Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.” The corner of the page: "Hey friend, got a minute to chat" ha!

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
That's not the gotcha you think it is; it's not just "hey", it's an actionable question.
- chockchocschoir 5y ago
  No, they're the same. Although here used in different contexts (trying to start a sync conversation VS marketing trying to get you to sign up for something), but they are effectively saying the same thing, "I need a minute from you for X".
- fleddr 5y ago
  It's still poor etiquette as it lacks basic context. Chat about what? Something important? The weather? What is the urgency/priority?

maccard 5y ago

> Write longer messages that scan quickly I like this one. I'm an emoji fan, but understand that not everyone else is. It boils down to "spend time crafting a message that contains the correct information" or even more succinctly "respect other people's time". There's nothing worse than a giant wall of text with all the pertinent information buried in the middle of it.

_carbyau_ 5y ago
Takes time to be concise: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ It's a trade off between comprehension and ease of distillation made easier if you know your audience well. If you take the time to ease comprehension then ALL who read it save time. But how much of your time will save how much of theirs?
- maccard 5y ago
  > But how much of your time will save how much of theirs? There's definitely a tradeoff to be had here, and it's up to you to decide. I err on the side of over-editing in work/professional communications (and likely under-editing on social media), out of courtesy for the people reading what I'm saying!

kyleblarson 5y ago

Another tip that vastly improves mental health as well as efficiency: turn off all notifications from slack, especially that damn broom sound.

nishs 5y ago
that broom sound is the worst. compare this to the sounds available on apple systems. in the directory /System/Library/Sounds: Funk, Morse, Blow.

_moof 5y ago

> …the recipient gets a notification on that first “hey” that contains no information and potentially causes distraction. The person might see the indicator that you’re typing but is still left waiting for your full message. I would turn this around and call this a product design problem. Maybe Slack shouldn't send a notification when all you've said is "hey" and you're typing a follow-up message. Really, if you have to publish a blog post explaining to people that they're using your product wrong, I'd say your product needs work.

bobsmooth 5y ago
Teaching people to replace "<send>" with ", " is better than trying to design a filter for every salutation.
paxys 5y ago
Not every social problem needs to have a tech solution. Slack allows sending messages between people. They don't need to start policing the content of these messages.

npunt 5y ago

Rather than just tell / hope people follow some etiquette, I'd love Slack to build more etiquette enforcing features that operators could enable. This isn't the 19th century where the best we can do is tell people to read a book on etiquette and hope for the best. Slack is in a unique position in the history of interpersonal communication where they have complete insight into (and design of) user's and organization's preferences as well as the messages themselves. And the medium is text, which is the easiest to analyze and provide feedback on. Some examples of what they could do, broadly captured in a 'Etiquette Features' preference set by the organization: 1. Never say 'hey' - if a user writes this, explain the etiquette and rationale for it and suggest they write a whole ass message instead, but optionally let the user just send it. 2. Make long messages scan easily - not too difficult for a computer to tell a long block of unformatted text. Great time to introduce the etiquette scaffold. 3. Use threads - a trickier one to suggest when people are typing, but likely some obvious response patterns (who & when messages are sent) that could trigger a etiquette scaffold asking to put this message in the thread if messages are similar enough to the thread's contents. 4. Short followups as emojis - orgs should be able to define clear meaning of response emojis that are visualized to everyone in the UI when selecting them (check means complete, question mark means need more info, etc). Short responses also likely have a pattern that could trigger a 'do you mean 'this is done'?' kind of scaffold, which would fill in emoji instead 6. Channel response expectations - a tiny text label is insufficient to set expectations, as are pinned messages. At the very least visualize timezones of participants, and when writing an @message to someone in a channel, if they're off-hours let the sender know that up front. All our communications tools favor low friction to send and devalue the recipients time (the phenomenon mentioned in Cal Newport's Deep Work), and Slack is a serious offender. There's a need for a higher friction, higher awareness path to send messages that better accounts for the full cost of such messages. Not every org would want/need this but it should absolutely be something a service like Slack offers.

thecosas 5y ago
It would be great to see Slack put some work in here, but could someone make an app (or Slackbot) to enforce/offer guidance? I know Slack culture can be hugely variable over time, especially for high-growth companies so there definitely needs to be some flexibility.

hamolton 5y ago

Agree with these takes. My company's system having the channel #eng-<team name>-lobby as a q/a forum for all teams has been incredible for spreading information, although I could imagine some cultures where it wouldn't work as well. The emojis they have for "Thank you" and "I'm looking into it" seem a bit ambiguous; my company has several "thank you" emotes, but nothing dedicated to the latter. Not sure what we should add.

AndrewOMartin 5y ago
At my place we use :eyes: for I'm looking at it, but feel free to also look, and a custom emoji of the word "onit" for I'm taking responsibility for it. There are also dedicated "thank you" and "done" emojis which feel great to see appear or to post, due to the unambiguous positive terminal message.

kerblang 5y ago

> Default to public channels for better workplace communication I have tried so hard to get people to do this, but it seems like a lot of my coworkers are honestly scared of "public" channels, and by "public" I mean a channel with only 15 or so people on it. They insist on DM'ing most things, and some just refuse to use chat at all; those will only communicate via email.

gbjw 5y ago
Sending a message in a public channel is psychologically akin to walking into a room full of people and just loudly proclaiming/demanding help. I don't think people are simply 'scared' to do it -- they just (rightly) intuit that it's somewhat strange and counterintuitive that it would be the preferred method over talking to an individual and building a rapport / friendship.
- ge96 5y ago
  Also if you sound dumb it's out there for the public to see.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    It's the job of everyone on the team, especially leads, to reply in ways that make sure everyone knows asking a dumb question is significantly better than being blocked. I would prefer to answer dumb questions all day long than have people on my team grind to a halt for a day because they're scared of asking for help.
    - ge96 5y ago
      Yeah that is a good point, it's bad when you dump hours into something that could be figured out in a couple of minutes.
    - bhawks 5y ago
      But they're not blocked and they are asking for help. They're just doing it via DM instead of in the 'public' chat. Slack is literally telling folks: 'You are holding it wrong'. In reality their product isn't that great for q&a or knowledge sharing. Horrible search, bad notification, high noise to low signal.

ryanschneider 5y ago

My number one Slack tip is to use the All Unreads view (which for some reason needs to be enabled in preferences). Bonus tip: it’s not available on mobile which means I now basically never check Slack from my phone. I can’t decide if the Slack devs are hopelessly overworked or genius for _still_ not offering it on mobile. Check the time stamp: https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/798631873911980032 https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/798631873911980032

kkfx 5y ago

Being polite and cooperative it's a good thing, self-censorship is not and the least one who can write an "etiquette" is a proprietary platform. Sorry that's just a pathetic bland and casual push toward Chinese social score homogenization. Usenet netiquette, mail netiquette etc are not wrote by someone up front but slowly formed by a community of users out of their experience. My own personal etiquette for Slack is: "sorry I do not use proprietary platforms, seen no reason for them, we have emails, chats, etc choosing a deliberate security risk is not a good policy for a company, as a sysadmin I can't take responsibility for it and so I can't even use it".

Tagbert 5y ago
You must be fun to work with. Slack and similar are just tools. Caring about whether they are proprietary or not is lower down on the stack of priorities for most of us.
- kkfx 5y ago
  Anything is just a tool, some are good tools, some (self/imposed)torture tools, some are just crappy tools pushed by ignorance that makes anything hard and inefficient, some are security threats etc. Personally I consider a third-party propritary digital communication tool a security threat on it's own, since the third party might audit anything and I can't tell if that's happen or not, that's why I classify similarly Slack, Zoom, Meet, Teams, O365 etc. I consider chat-based coms something useful in another era, when we can't just make VoIP calls, or still useful if you need to reach a remote ship or submarine via very expensive and limited sat/LF coms (classic telex), definitely wrong otherwise. My coms are simple: you need to reach me quickly? Call me, classic SIP/RTP. It's not urgent? Send me a mail, a plain text one with a romance quoted multiple times or a signature longer then the message itself. Try to be "more connected" means trying to be distracted and less productive. Need to send me files? I hope any company do have a decent DMS also for file sharing purposes. Need to share the screen? Ok, call me and we do etc. Right tool for the right job. About working with me practically: for most who know me it's not an issue, and my productivity tend to be far above the average, for newcomers seems not hyper-nice to start, but it's a short time period.

renewiltord 5y ago

Great tips. I think a reference is good for people who won't do things unless they have an authority to tell them.