I say hello to know if the recipient isn’t sharing his screen in another meeting. Otherwise they will see my message.
Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
161–170 of 362 posts
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#162Its a silly thing but many years ago the Andorid dev IRC channel's pinned subject was "Don't ask to ask. Just ask."
I feel like that helped me, haha.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#163Imagine some idiot trolling a tcp mailing list about the futility of connection establishment, wasting the time of the experts, then digging deeper and claiming even if there's a reason for it there's still no sensible way to automate the process of responding to the initial request.
That's what it feels like every time programmers attempt to "socialize" users to their incompetently designed, user-hostile software.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#164>People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request, like one would in person or on the phone - and that's great! Different people have different reasons but I notice that many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is present for an immediate reply. In other words, the sender deliberately wants a synchronous instead of asynchronous convo. They do…
This is something I have not considered before. I've always thought chat was a medium where you can go asynchronous at any time.
This indicates a failure in design. If they want a sync chat, then there should be an easy UI element for it.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#165>People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request, like one would in person or on the phone - and that's great! Different people have different reasons but I notice that many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is present for an immediate reply. In other words, the sender deliberately wants a synchronous instead of asynchronous convo. They do…
Oh I have one friend like this. He's lurking there and typing occasionally "Hi" when he feels I might be there. I know that if I answer immediately, I'll lose half an hour of my life. So after seeing the message I deliberately wait a few hours, and then answer "hi" and immediately log out. I consider it rude to demand someone's attention for an extended period of time without asking for it first. At the beginning of…
> I consider it rude to demand someone's attention for an extended period of time without asking for it first.
“Hi, busy atm.”
You’ve built this whole strategy, and are judging your friend as rude, to avoid this phrase.
Be explicit or accept people as they are.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#166>People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request, like one would in person or on the phone - and that's great! Different people have different reasons but I notice that many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is present for an immediate reply. In other words, the sender deliberately wants a synchronous instead of asynchronous convo. They do…
Is it harsh to say that the people I know who do this are also just not as sharp generally?
I’m not sure if this is unique to me, but there’s a tight correlation between people who send naked initial “hi” messages and people who can be more tedious to work with.
I’d also wonder if it’s related to being bad at typing.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#167I totally relate. But my even greater peeve is the unaccompanied personal question 'how are you?', especially after a period of little to no communication. It's in these moments I feel forced to analyze the give-and-take balance with contacts. I don't like being called to attention without at least a small offering. I try very hard to reflect this when reaching out to people myself.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#168>People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request, like one would in person or on the phone - and that's great! Different people have different reasons but I notice that many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is present for an immediate reply. In other words, the sender deliberately wants a synchronous instead of asynchronous convo. They do…
This is a common theme in my workplace. Especially with everyone working remote and odd hours these days. We use both email and Slack, but most conversations tend to be asynchronous regardless and I frequently wonder why we even have an instant messenger. That said, I find that even if a message is asynchronous, it is much easier to track conversation flow via slack than email. Reply chains and indentations get messy…
A new one for me is that work email is filled with security audit emails.
Slack so far is not.
I’ll open up my email, see if any subject lines are important, I’ll then go directly to service and get info there. I basically never open actual work emails ever.
So tired of gotcha security
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#169I don't think this advice is useful because a lot of the time the reason people are doing this is the reason people don't like it.
When someone states their request outright the recipient may be "conditionally there" based on the content of the request: They'll reply if they find the question interesting/relevant and worth interrupting what they're doing and put it off otherwise.
The asker, however, would prefer their question get answered. If they first determine if the recipient is present there will be social pressure to answer the following question, even if its a waste of the recipient's time at the moment.
The recipient may find it aggravating to have people soft-force them to pre-commit to responding when they don't even know what will be asked.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#170I am the original author of the document this document was based on. It was an internal Wiki page at Google written when I was an SRE. After I wrote the original page, someone put up an internal shortlink at "go/nohello". After I left Google, someone took the Wiki page content and [illegally, since it was Google confidential, simply from being on the internal Wiki], and put it up on the net at "nohello.com". The link…
There was a "go/yeshello" to provide the opposing argument, and later a "go/onlyhello" which is obviously the correct answer