Slack Netiquette and Best Practices

Table of contents:

• No Hello 👋
• Less Messages ↩️
• Always* Reply in Thread 💬
• Channels Privacy 🔒
• #general 🆚 #random
• Be Generous with Emoji Reactions 🙂
• Add a Profile Photo 🧑‍🎤

No Hello 👋

Slack is foremost async (as opposed to a phone call or a face to face meeting).
So greeting "Hi!" and waiting for someone to respond before actually asking your question is counterproductive for both of you.
We're definitely not against politeness - just string both parts together, for example: "Hola! Are we compliant with WCAG level A?"
Learn more: https://nohello.net/, https://nohello.club/, https://no-hello.com/...

Less Messages ↩️

When writing more than one paragraph, don't send them as separate messages.

Why?

• In a teeming chat, fragmented messages might get scattered around other members' messages, therefore harder to follow
• Someone might not notice you're still typing and ask you a question regarding your first paragraph which you're already about to answer in the second one
• Fragmented messages cause unnecessary notifications (and some of us would rather not mute certain channels)

You can:

• Either press shift-Enter to start a new line within the same message
• Or better yet, change your preferences so plain Enter always starts a new line (and use ⌘-Enter (Mac) or ctrl-Enter (Windows) to send)

Always* Reply in Thread 💬

👎 Replying in a 'main' message triggers a notification for all channel members.

👍 Replying in a thread triggers a notification only for members who also replied to it.

This not only reduces noise, but also allows for better organized discussions.

(* it's less of an issue in a direct chat with someone)

Channels Privacy 🔒

When creating a new channel:

• If sensitive information will be discussed in it (anything that relates to customers, investors, prospect employees, etc.) - set it to private. If in doubt - set it to private.
• Only if no such information will be discussed (book club, basketball team, lan party, etc.) - it's probably okay to leave it as public.

While we're on this subject: don't discuss sensitive information via WhatsApp.

#general 🆚 #random

The #general channel is meant for company-wide announcements (e.g. "There's an electricity maintenance at the office at 19:00", "Next month we're hosting a meetup - save the date!", and so on).

#general is the only channel you cannot leave. Once the company gets big enough, we might restrict who can post to it.

On the other hand, the #random channel is the digital equivalent of a water cooler conversation - meant for casual stuff, non-work related, nerdy humor, etc.

Be Generous with Emoji Reactions 🙂

In 2014 Slack added 'read receipts' (arguably their most requested feature) to their backlog:

Slack

@slackhq

@hermansje @svencharleer Planning on something like read receipts. 🎉 Thank you for the kind words! (And welcome @svencharleer)

23:20 PM - 26 Aug 2014

Year after year, they kept postponing it. Until 2018 when they actively decided against it:

Slack

@slackhq

@godismyjudge95 We decided against adding read receipts, but many people use emoji reactions on messages as a sort of voluntary (and, dare we say, more fun) version of a read receipt. 🐝

22:55 PM - 09 Oct 2018

So if you read a message like "Today's all-hands meeting will be held 30 minutes earlier", nobody can tell whether you read it or not, so it's a good citizenship to react with an emoji (👍, 👌, etc.) to signal you actually did.

Add a Profile Photo 🧑‍🎤

Slack’s default avatars are... uninspiring:


An actual photo is great, but any picture can add a personal touch and will help everyone with the #1 general netiquette rule: remember the human.