[madsbuch]

I have experience that suggests the contrary of his suggestions. Working in a remote culture, often we can spend too much time writing things out and in turn reading things that are irrelevant.

I would propose a more progressive framework: Start with the short message without any context. If needed, make a new message with all the context.

As an example I have a couple of times asked for help where a response would list the pros and cons of "REST" and I would have to spend too much attention reading it. Alternatively the following would have been perfect:

> X is hard to do in Elixir, any ideas?

< Defer it to our Next frontend. It is easy to do in JavaScript

> Thanks!

[onion2k]

The problem with opening with "> X is hard to do in Elixir, any ideas?" is that it shuts down any conversation about X. You've decided it's hard, but what if you're wrong? What if you could avoid X entirely by doing Y? What if the context around X makes it also hard to do in Next? Adding a little bit of context really helps open conversations.

[madsbuch]

Two people pointed this out with this commentary.

This is the exact point. I trust my colleagues in asking the right questions. Unless I shut them down with a wall of chatter.

> X is hard to do in Elixir, any ideas?

< We don't really need X for now

> Thanks!

[Jensson]

It is the opposite, being wrong is a really great way to start a conversation, people are really eager to correct mistakes.

[squeaky-clean]

The ol' Barrens Chat Law from WoW. Need to find Mankrik's Wife for that level 20 quest? Don't ask "Where is Mankrik's Wife?" instead say "If anyone is looking for Mankrik's Wife I found her by the auction house in Ratchet" and watch 25 players immediately respond that you're wrong and the real location is X.

On a more serious note, while this works it can backfire if someone follows the wrong info too far, and it can make you look clueless if done too much. If you need to do this, I feel the best way is to also phrase it as a question but leading towards the incorrect answer. Something like "I've been trying to get X working in Elixir but keep getting errors. It looks like [library] doesn't support [feature]?"

[commandlinefan]

> I have experience that suggests the contrary of his suggestions

Yep, this is the "internet blog" phenomenon. The author asserts, without any evidence, that _X_ ought to be true, therefore _X_ is true.

[madsbuch]

On the contrary I think treating DMs in an internal chat tool as blogging is quite harmful.

As elaborated in another comment, I do trust my peers to point out errors in my assumptions.