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Amnon Sadeh
Amnon Sadeh

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Slack Netiquette and Best Practices

Table of contents:

No Hello πŸ‘‹

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) In Slack preferences you can set what pressing Enter does

Always* Reply in Thread πŸ’¬

πŸ‘Ž Replying in a 'main' message triggers a notification for all channel members.

πŸ‘ 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 πŸ”’

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 πŸ†š #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 πŸ™‚

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

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

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 (πŸ‘, πŸ‘Œ, etc.) to signal you actually did.

Add a Profile Photo πŸ§‘β€πŸŽ€

Slack’s default avatars are... uninspiring:
Unidentified person silhouette
First letter of name
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.
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