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Comment by tobr | Hacker News Reader

That looks nice, but often the [describe your problem] part is three paragraphs and a few code snippets.

You can interrupt my channels with a three paragraph problem description any time. I'll gladly take that over "the thing doesn't work."

At my current employer, the common pattern is a TLDR of the problem as the initiator, then thread your more elaborate description.

Though we also usually have private team channels and separate support channels for a team in our Slack. I.e. the SRE team might have their own sre-priv channel for team chatter, and an sre-support channel for external support requests, so perhaps that is a function of this format.

You'll often see a new msg in the support chan with something like the following:

> Hey #TEAM, we're seeing an issue with the spline reticulator not reticulating splines. Started last night. Details in :thread:. Thanks!

followed by notes/logs/stack traces as needed. Works quite well, and doesn't choke the channel with endless walls of text.

Put "Good morning everyone, would anybody be available to answer a question?" in the channel, then reply to it in a thread with the details.

Wouldn't this approach exactly have the issues the article recommends against?

Type out the question in full in a text editor, then paste it after the greeting if you're worried about delay. Although if you're posting in a channel, I don't even think it's an issue; people will see that you are typing and follow up when you have provided more info.

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