> 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.

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

> 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.

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

> Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.”

The corner of the page: "Hey friend, got a minute to chat"

ha!

> 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.

> Less messages means more efficient collaboration

I think this should be "Fewer messages...". Good grammar improves communication, as well.

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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

Most important Slack etiquette ...

Don't @channel large channels after hours!

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.

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

> …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.

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.

https://nohello.net/en/

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

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.

hi, can I leave a comment?

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.

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".