Thread by @Folletto

Let's share a few tips on using Slack!

Here's a thread with some smaller useful ideas that you can borrow or refine... and: add yours! 😁

#slack #etiquette #designtwitter

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You can have some messages as "FYI", which mean this is relevant to know to this group, channel, or person, but doesn't require any action from them.

For extra clarity, I add a lighthouse emoji.

Marking questions clearly is also very useful: the yellow animated emoji does this very well. These are important questions that are expected for everyone to review and possibly answer.

Notice also the pinning: recently we are experimenting using "Pins" for questions and decisions. In this way, when someone comes online, the only thing they have to do is to check the list of new pins, and they are up-to-date.

One important practice is however that Slack isn't a source of truth. All important decisions are then written somewhere else. For Automattic, this is our internal network of team P2s or the internal WordPress-based "wiki".
To help nudge this behaviour, we use this emoji:

If you use voting via reactions, I'd strongly advise to "prime" it with the first two replies, so both "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" start with 1. This makes voting easier for the first person, and makes disagreement easier too (nobody wants to be the first adding a thumb down).

Small mistake in the mock screenshot: that text shouldn't start with "FYI" 😅