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> - When you send an “instant message”, it may be instant for you but for all you know the recipient is deep in the middle of something and won’t respond for awhile. Not personal, don’t get mad at them.

People don't get it. If they said a DM / IM or any program which is considered a "chat" app they expect instant replies.

I run a single person software company. I used to allow people to contact me for support any and all chat programs. So for paying customers you can magnify that "expect an instant reply" factor. People would get quite annoyed, regardless of whether it was Sunday, or 3am in the morning for me.

For that reason, only email and forum support is no offered. Never had a complaint since about wait times. People expect to wait after sending an email. They expect to wait for a forum post. They do not expect to wait for a chat / IM / DM response.

>When you send an E-mail, at least imagine that the recipient may have literally hundreds of other messages to dredge through and the time required to respond (and detail of response) may reflect that. Not personal, don’t get mad at them.

It's refreshing to see someone on HN say this. If you look at my comment history, you'll find a number of people who've replied to my comment who say it is incredibly rude not to answer someone's email promptly. My stance over the last few years has become: If anyone (including automated services) can put an email in my inbox, I am not obligated to read it. Until I can get a reliable heuristic that distinguishes well thought out emails from the crud, I don't feel obligated to spend my limited time on tending to my inbox. The only realistic solution is to have sending emails incur a cost, in order to curb the quantity of emails. Your sending me an email doesn't obligate me to read or respond to it.

I'm not an open source maintainer who gets a ton of support emails. Yet if I feel my stance is necessary for my sanity, imagine how much worse it is for those folks.

For IM's, at work, my status says something like: "If you're physically in the building, come talk to me in person if urgent or send me an email if not. If you are remote, email me if not urgent, or let's set up a voice chat if urgent."

The only useful thing about IM at the work place is in things like active debugging, or a coworker in an adjacent cubicle needing to send me a link related to a live conversation we're having. Other than those, it becomes a conversation that drags out and never ends. They'll often wait multiple minutes before responding to me (they are the ones who initiated the IM). Having IM windows open and randomly flashing takes up my mental space and distracts.

(Note: We do not use Slack).

(Note 2: My saying "send email" contradicts with my first paragraph, which I wrote with my personal email in mind. The SNR is much higher for my work email).

I agree with a lot of these.

One thing i've noticed in life is that our use of aschynchronous communication methods is much more in a "respond now" fashion.

Also as a contributor to StackOverflow your point about asking questions with the right amount of information is really spot on.