Responding to a slack message in its thread vs replying in a new message, Is it a status thing?
I have seen this too many times in slack channels that sometimes people choose to respond to a message in its thread and sometimes reply to the same message posting it as a completely new message in the channel. And it depends on who they are responding to. If they are responding to a message by someone at a lower level, it would be through a new message and if the response is to a message by someone at higher level, it will be in the message thread. How to respond to a message by someone at the same level depends on the individual. Is there some sort of weird status thing attached to whether you reply in the thread or through a new message?
I don’t understand how this could be seen as a status or level thing. I think it’s 100% personal preference.
Reply in a new message if everyone else is also supposed to see the message, reply in thread if it isn't pertinent to others. Junior devs are more likely to ask questions that should be publicly answered so someone else doesn't have to ask the same question again.
It’s a micro aggression
They create a new message? They don't just reply in the thread and click the check box "also send to channel"? I mean it's hard to say generically why people would do that, but in the cases that I have seen it is usually done because the information being responded to is something worth surfacing to everyone in the channel. More often than not information flowing downward is more broadly interesting to everyone (at least that's how a manager would see it) whereas information flowing upward is probably only useful to the recipient.
Responding in a new message is just dumb imho, junior behavior .. always reply in thread and if it's super important, check also send to channel.
Respond in thread for most things, respond in thread and check 'also send to channel ' if most people should see it or if its especially important. Only time i post a reply as a new message is if i forget to open a thread or its a very very small channel and it's not going to cause chaos. Status ain't got shit to do with it
i was at AWS, the threading was essential especially in support channels that would be unusable if you don’t thread. It’s simply for organization and proper usage of your chat tool. If you see someone behaving differently toward different levels, that’s their own personality and not cultural at least in my org. Just like how my buddy Rajesh was rude to waiters but subservient to higher level colleagues
Yes unfortunately I see this happening a lot in a project slack channel in Prime Video where there are folks who are across L4-L7. Sometimes these L6 or L7 will refuse to reply in the thread even if the conversation spans across 10s of messages unless of course if the thread was started by another L7. These are SDMs and PMs.
Sometimes it’s wise to ignore unproductive patterns, even if it is real. If you don’t make it a habit to ignore, eventually you will see discrimination where there is none. If it bothers you so much DM the person and politely ask to reply in a thread.
For DMs, it depends on how many different topics we’re talking about. I don’t give a shit to whom I’m responding, i’ll always respond in a thread for any message in slack channels.
In a group chat, there will be always different topics, so best way to consolidate all relevant messages is to reply in thread.