The example that comes up first for me is the ambassador program in telegram from a project. there's a lead ambassador role and most of the time he's the one giving out unclear tasks. the problem is the instructions are usually kind of vague, and then he goes offline. when members get stuck, there's no one else with enough context to step in. so people just guess. they submit something half-done or completely off-brief, and the lead has to come back later and correct or redo. the work gets done eventually but it's messy, and the same confusion repeats next round because no one in the chat got trained to fill the gap.
The hardest part for me would be sitting with the discomfort of being seen as quiet. if i practiced strategic silence somewhere, i think i'd worry about a few things at once. that the question hangs there and the person who asked feels ignored, especially if no one ends up answering. that someone else jumps in with the wrong answer first and bad info sits in the chat for anyone scrolling back. and the one that's harder to admit, that the lead or founder notices the silence and reads it as me not doing my job. silence still feels like absence to whoever's paying attention.
For the third part i tried this in a discord project i'm in but don't operate. the recurring stuck questions are usually technical or about reward distribution. if no one from the team responds, the chat just stalls. i waited longer than three minutes, closer to ten. another member came in and tried to help, got it half right, the question stayed half-resolved. and most of the time when technical or reward questions land without team input, no one answers at all. it just sits. which makes me think the community isn't at the stage where strategic silence works as a mechanic yet. the regulars haven't been trained to answer with confidence because the team hasn't given them enough information to work with. so silence in that kind of room doesn't train anyone, it just leaves the person who asked stuck.