Manage difficult situations in Chat

Shut down a chat space

Chat spaces are free. There is no need to delete them.

But there may be cases in which you may want to delete them. For example, chat spaces in which people can ask questions. 

When a chat space has outlived its usefulness, you may want to shut it down. Try this:

• Tell people this space will shut down tomorrow.

• Rename the space to something like ❌ Old title - EXPIRED ❌. Actually use these big red x's as icons!

• Finally, delete it.

Remove a person from a chat space

How do you exclude people from a chat space? Everybody can add members by plussing them in - when your chat space becomes unwieldy, especially when sensitive content is to be discussed, you may want to remove people.

Removing people is technically possible. You can go full Steve Jobs on people and remove them. You should probably tell them why you are removing them and make it tactful. Remember they will also lose access to chat space history they may have contributed to, but will retain access to conversation snippets they have forwarded to their inbox.

Note: If you have invited a group to a chat space and the person is part of the group, the person can come back. Also, anybody can add the person back. There is no permanent banning.

Shrink a space = Open a new one

That's also hard to do. Sometimes, it is ok to speak up to the team (if you are a senior person) and announce that the chat space will be cleared up and thank you all for your contributions so far. This is what you would do for meetings, anyway.

Sometimes, it is better to just open a new space. The main space will go quiet and the "new" core team will continue to work in the much smaller space.

Rename a space

That's not difficult at all. Just rename the space - everybody can do it. Just be sure to follow some naming standard. People will see who renamed it. You can restrict who can rename a space (to avoid edit wars) with a policy.

Stay out of space you do not want to be in

You can leave spaces, but other people can add you back again. Especially in big space, this happens without bad will. Other people may plus you in, what they normally to get your attention. They may not know that you had left and this will add you back. They will see a quick message ("add Holger to the space?") which most will just acknowledge. Aaand you're back.

There is not really much you can do. You can mute the space, but this sort of message (an @mention in Chat speak) will have the highest priority and will likely pop up. Perhaps mom was right: Ignore the bully and they will let you in peace.