Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack • Hacker News Board

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#31

Post by AndrewOMartin » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

hamolton wrote: post #24

Agree with these takes. My company's system having the channel #eng- -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.

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.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#32

Post by bmhin » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #4

> 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…

It likely depends on the broad culture behind it. If someone sends a "Hey" and then is a fast enough typer and immediately can get the context going as I look, that's not a huge deal. Sometimes it's an opening to a more synchronous conversation and then it's less of a big deal because we're gonna be going back and forth with quick messages. Part of the irritation is you can still just always open a message with "Hey, something something something" and keep it all in one.

The problem is people who send a lone "Hey" and then... nothing.

Some will wait for you to say respond with your own greeting (which is all you can respond with because you don't know what you're even talking about yet). Other's don't wait but do delay and the initial greeting was just a warning or something that a "real" message is incoming. I've had folks ping me the "Hey" and then I respond immediately with a "Hey" (to stave off the above "permission to speak" people) and they get distracted and say nothing else for 10 minutes.

Some will message you while you're busy, so you don't respond to their "Hi". You then respond to it a half hour later with the only thing you can say to that contextless message: "Hey, what's up?". Only now maybe they are busy, and they respond again to you a half hour after that. You've had a conversation "opening" for an hour for what purpose?

Some will immediately begin typing out a gigantic block of text and you are sitting there waiting while the "XX is typing" message unwaveringly sits at the bottom. Bonus points here if they were editing and revising as they went and you get an eight word sentence after what appeared to be 3 minutes of continuous typing.

Some will do all of those things so you end up having your attention taken multiple times for minutes at a time for a message that realistically might take you a couple seconds to read, parse, and respond to if it had been sent all at once.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#33

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #4

> 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…

Typing "hey commandlinefan where is your list of ssh shortcuts?" is the best, as it's polite (could be politer I assume but it's not just a give me), and it gets you everything you need to know to answer (or if you do) right there. Maybe doing military style with "most important" first would be nicer "ssh shortcuts - hey commandlinefan, where's the list" but that's a minor thing.

Typing "hey"

and then "where's the ssh shortcuts" in quick succession isn't as great (buzzes the phone twice perhaps) but at least by the time you look at it you see what's needed.

Typing "hey"

and not adding anything more until you get "hello" back - this is what drives people up the wall. It's adding a SYN/ACK on top of TCP/IP and greatly slows down chat communications. I've had a "hello" and then immediately replied "hey" and then not heard anything for hours.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#34

Post by kkfx » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

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".

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#35

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #7

jawns wrote: post #2

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

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.)

It would be nice if there was something like @eventually for everyone in the channel the next time they get on or similar.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#36

Post by Mandatum » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

thecosas wrote: post #30

npunt wrote: post #20

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…

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.

I've seen a few orgs build their own etiquette-enforcement bots for things like channel naming conventions, as well as minimum "guidelines listed" in the channel description (like periodically going through all channels and checking to see if channel description has SLAs etc). But it's all organisation or team-specific.

And for about 98% of orgs, building a bot to enforce conventions is definitely not getting prioritised above BAU or project work.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#37

Post by forbiddenvoid » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

kerblang wrote: post #26

> 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.

"Scared of public channels" often means "doesn't have the psychological safety to say something out loud that might end up being perceived negatively or as though they don't know what they're doing."

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#38

Post by DoneWithAllThat » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #4

> 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…

The “No hello” ethos in chat goes back to at least 2005. This is not a new thing at all, it’s just the industry is constantly being refreshed with young workers who learn anew what many people understood well over a decade ago.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#39

Post by Macha » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #35

gkoberger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It would be nice if there was something like @eventually for everyone in the channel the next time they get on or similar.

Isn't this the behaviour of @here? It puts a counter and highlight on the channel.

Re: Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack

#40

Post by paxys » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #2

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

"After hours" means different things to different people. Just set up your DnD settings and let people message when and how they want, and then reply when and how you want.