[HN Gopher] Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack
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Collaborate with kindness: Etiquette tips in Slack
Author : sendilkumarn
Score : 36 points
Date : 2022-03-28 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slack.com)
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Another tip that vastly improves mental health as well as
| efficiency: turn off all notifications from slack, especially
| that damn broom sound.
| enriquto wrote:
| 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.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Curious, in what way is it humiliation?
| gkoberger wrote:
| This... is an insane take. It's "humiliating" for you to use
| the communication platform your company has chosen?
| richm31415 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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+C
| orinthians+9...
| enriquto wrote:
| I'm an activist for software freedom and I refuse to use non-
| free software in my life, as a matter of principle. When I'm
| forced to do so it's certainly very humiliating for me.
|
| Besides, I don't work for a company, but in the public sector
| (which by the way I think it should not impose non-free
| software nor secret protocols into the citizens).
| _moof wrote:
| _> ...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.
| paxys wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Mandatum wrote:
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| All of this is possible to do via custom bots. Ultimately
| there's no single standard Slack can enforce that will work for
| all of their users, so it's best to stay as lightweight as
| possible when it comes to stuff like etiquette.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > 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.
| paxys wrote:
| If you say hey and immediately follow up with your message,
| that's fine.
|
| If you say hey, wait for a reply, and only then start with your
| actual question, that comes off as very annoying.
| bmhin wrote:
| 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.
| cmehdy wrote:
| Ah, you must have stumbled upon https://nohello.net/ too. I
| think what they mean is "don't just say hey and leave a person
| hanging", i.e. if you have a long message to write just put it
| all together instead of potentially attracting somebody's
| attention to make them wait while <user is writing
| something..>.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| ozarker wrote:
| I have a coworker that does it constantly and it bugs me to no
| end. I have to respond, they then ask what they were going to
| ask seconds or minutes later. Effectively breaking my
| concentration twice and making things take longer than they
| should.
| depaya wrote:
| I can tell you why it bothers me personally. As soon as I see
| "Hey" my attention has been captured by the sender. I now have
| to sit there and wait for them to type out everything else. Or
| they sit there and wait for me to respond before they send any
| follow up. After waiting awhile maybe I learn that what they
| are sending is not time urgent, but too late my attention has
| already been completely removed from what I was working on.
|
| The root of the problem is some people see Slack as more
| synchronous than others. I personally see Slack as more async
| (more synchronous than an email, but less than a phone call). I
| screen messages as they come in and respond in a way that makes
| sense to me. Likewise if I send somebody a message I don't
| expect an immediate response. Somebody simply sending "Hey"
| _forces_ the conversation to be synchronous.
| ninkendo wrote:
| People have to prioritize their time. If they get messages from
| someone, they have to weigh responding to it against all of the
| other things they may be doing with their time (other messages,
| that ticket you're working on, etc etc.)
|
| By just saying "Hey", you're leaving a message of _unknown
| priority_. You're giving the other party zero information as to
| what you might want. If you say that to me, you're saying "I
| need your attention, but I'm _not going to tell you what for_."
| If I respond, are you going to ask me a brief question? Are you
| going to drag me into a meeting that may take tons of my time?
| Who knows?
|
| Also, I may not get your "hey" until an hour later. Now what
| happens? I reply "hi". Then I have to sit and wait around for
| _you_ to get my response, so that you can reply with what you
| were going to ask me. But what if you're away? Now we're
| playing message tag. Contrast that with what would have
| happened if you would have just put your question in the
| original message: Now, I can read your question, do my best to
| find an answer, and give you a reply, and I can do so at my
| leisure. When I respond and you're not available, the answer is
| waiting for you when you get back.
|
| I make it a personal policy to just not respond when somebody
| just says "hey". If it's important, you'll follow up. I once
| had a status meeting where someone said "I'm blocked on X
| because I reached out to ninkendo for support, and he didn't
| respond", to which my response was "You didn't reach out to me
| for support at all, you just said 'hi'. How was I supposed to
| know you had something important to ask? For all I know you
| just wanted to ask about my weekend..."
| Melatonic wrote:
| I dont think it is a problem with saying "hey" but when you
| say "hey" by itself. All the time I will say something like
| "hey" and then a followup message with a short question or
| asking how they are doing, etc etc.
|
| But for sure it is annoying when someone sends me a message
| that says "Hi" and then says nothing else until I respond
| ninkendo wrote:
| I'd say it would even better if you just put a couple of
| newlines after "hey" and put your question in the same
| message. One less notification would be appreciated by your
| coworkers.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, I don't have to look over, give a sigh, and then
| sit there waiting for the message to come through for the
| next two minutes.
| _moof wrote:
| You can say hello/good morning/etc. at the beginning of your
| message. What's annoying is when you send a greeting as a
| separate message. The greeting itself is not annoying, and, I
| agree, is polite. But distracting someone with a zero-
| information message and then making them wait for what you
| actually want to say is decidedly impolite.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| 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.
| reggieband wrote:
| I think it depends on the moment it happens. When I managed a
| larger team I could get a bit of communication overload. I'm
| trying to juggle ten requests at the same time, prioritizing
| who/what needs answering/updating and generally making sure I
| am unblocking anyone/everyone.
|
| So when I see "Hey" I rarely see it as polite. What I'm
| thinking is "What do you want!? Spit it out!". IMO, politeness
| would be something like "Hey, I have a question about X, is now
| a good time". That at least I can prioritize. All I want is a
| tiny bit of context to the "Hey".
| hamolton wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Great tips. I think a reference is good for people who won't do
| things unless they have an authority to tell them.
| kkfx wrote:
| 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".
| 27182818284 wrote:
| > Never send a direct message that just says "hey" or "hello."
|
| The corner of the page: "Hey friend, got a minute to chat"
|
| ha!
| kerblang wrote:
| > 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.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| "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."
| jawns wrote:
| Most important Slack etiquette ...
|
| Don't @channel large channels after hours!
| paxys wrote:
| "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.
| gkoberger wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It would be nice if there was something like @eventually for
| everyone in the channel _the next time they get on_ or
| similar.
| Macha wrote:
| Isn't this the behaviour of @here? It puts a counter and
| highlight on the channel.
| [deleted]
| maccard wrote:
| > 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.
| ryanschneider wrote:
| 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
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| > Less messages means more efficient collaboration
|
| I think this should be "Fewer messages...". Good grammar improves
| communication, as well.
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