Chat is not the same as conversation. When you tag someone using the "@" or if you send them a direct message, you may be directly forcing them to change their focus to your problem. While this is good for you, it can be bad for a healthy and productive community. Here are a couple of rules to abide.
- Only "@" tag people's names in the following cases.
- Your comment is urgent/time-sensitive and you need the help of the "@" target. What is urgent? You are running a production application with 100s of users facing a broken API, it's urgent. You are experimenting or taking part in a competition and want an answer quickly, it's not urgent.
- Your comment has grown stale and you still need an answer that the "@" target can provide. What is stale? In most cases, more than 2 days seems reasonable or if it's a weekend, 3 or more.
- You comment is in a channel or thread where the "@" target is not present but you need them aware.
- Abide by the "no hello" rule at all times. Provide