On asking good questions asynchronously

[coderbyheart]

I think this guide deserves a section on how to ask good questions in Slack (or any chat):

Bad:

Them: Hey!

time passes until I enter the chat

Me: Yes?

time passes until they see my response

Them: Can I ask you a question?
Me: Yes, sure.

Them is typing...

(time passes until I can finally start answering their question ...)

Them is typing...

(... and they rephrase their question ...)

Them: Nevermind, I've figured it out!

(In the worst case for me rubber-duck debugging helped them to solve it while they wrote down their problem)

Good:

Them: Hey, I need to thing by time, could you help me with this? Continue to explain problem.

time passes until I enter the chat

Me: sure, I can have a look at it by time.

later

Me: here you go ...

---

The point is to use chat as asynchronously as possible and not to pull in people's attention unnecessarily.

[coderbyheart]

I am aware that is already mentioned,

For example don’t start with sent only “hey” or “hello”, make it a first line of your message.

but this issue could use some more attention.

[kotzendekrabbe]

Thank you for your Input Markus :) - would you be up for putting it together for a PR? that would be amazing.

[coderbyheart]

Yes, sure!