71–79 of 79 posts
Do you want to send this confidential message to be seen by the people who are looking at my screen because of IM sends the message on the popup?
Anything I feel is confidential starts with a hello so that I know the other party is ready.
Anything generic also starts with a hello because in my country you don't just talk to people without a greeting, but then the content immediately follows
The real question is why Tim waits 4 minutes to reply to the "Hello!", but instantly replies to "Hello! ". What a selfrighteous jackass. Seriously though - as someone who's a 20-year resident in technical channels, who's had to deal with plenty of "Hello!"'s - this website comes off as incredibly condescending and very stereotypical for people working in an IT department.
The real question to me is why you expect somebody to drop everything and reply to "hello." It's not about being righteous, it's just not a productive use of your time. If I'm not busy, I'll reply quickly, but if I'm in the middle of something, chit-chatting with somebody who just wants to say hi is usually lower priority.
Nobody expects you to drop anything. They want to see if you're there, and if you're not, they'll look for someone else to help them instead of asking you a question that might not be answered until long after they already received an answer from someone else.
If you don't want to interrupt your work and reply, then don't. Don't be rude and expect people to read a manual about how to interact with you.
If you're asking a quick, informational, easy thing, then "Hi! What is the test server name?" is good. But dropping something upfront that is ambiguous or requiring thought isn't great. If you drop a thorny problem on someone, you may kind of force a context change on them, causing them to drop their train of thought and focus on what you need instead. You can pre-compose your longer thought/question. Then paste it o…
it's on the other party to defend their attention/focus. preemptively witholding information doesn't lead to a global optimum
Conducting communication as an adversarial process is *going to fail*.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real question to me is why you expect somebody to drop everything and reply to "hello." It's not about being righteous, it's just not a productive use of your time. If I'm not busy, I'll reply quickly, but if I'm in the middle of something, chit-chatting with somebody who just wants to say hi is usually lower priority.
This is exactly what I mean. Nobody expects you to drop anything. They want to see if you're there, and if you're not, they'll look for someone else to help them instead of asking you a question that might not be answered until long after they already received an answer from someone else. If you don't want to interrupt your work and reply, then don't. Don't be rude and expect people to read a manual about how to inte…
> why Tim waits 4 minutes to reply to the "Hello!", but instantly replies to "Hello! ". What a selfrighteous jackass.
As far as I can tell, this question only makes sense if you expect him to treat both messages with equal priority, and believe failure to do so makes one a jackass. If you agree that it's reasonable to treat "pings" with lower priority than concrete questions, then it seems pretty easy to imagine why Tim waited 4 minutes to reply to "Hello" but instantly replied to a question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's on the other party to defend their attention/focus. preemptively witholding information doesn't lead to a global optimum
> it's on the other party to defend their attention/focus. Conducting communication as an adversarial process is *going to fail*.
Fundamentally there's a basic need to protect one's own resources needed for a healthy psyche. And unfortunately this is very much "left as an exercise to the reader" in many (almost all?) cultures around the world. And the unsurprising result is that many people are taken advantage of by those who exploit the lack of the aforementioned psychological skills.
I know I am going to be downvoted so hard for this, but this is the most Hacker News thing ever. People have all sorts of different ways to converse; people have different models of politeness, people are shy, uncertain or awkward in all sorts of different ways. Some things just can't be blurted out. Some things need the scene setting. People are people. Not robots. Producing a website to demand that people address y…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what I mean. Nobody expects you to drop anything. They want to see if you're there, and if you're not, they'll look for someone else to help them instead of asking you a question that might not be answered until long after they already received an answer from someone else. If you don't want to interrupt your work and reply, then don't. Don't be rude and expect people to read a manual about how to inte…
The question you asked is: > why Tim waits 4 minutes to reply to the "Hello!", but instantly replies to "Hello! ". What a selfrighteous jackass. As far as I can tell, this question only makes sense if you expect him to treat both messages with equal priority, and believe failure to do so makes one a jackass. If you agree that it's reasonable to treat "pings" with lower priority than concrete questions, then it seems…
This is a stupid post. By stupid I mean it seems to me that the author of it is deliberately refusing to use his mind. The purpose of saying “hi” is to check for presence in order to initiate a live conversation. It sends a message that the person wishes to speak live whenever that is convenient. I’m sorry if the poster doesn’t understand the value of live conversation, but that’s not our problem. Now people like me…
A huge benefit of many (most?) chat apps is that communication can be async. If it requires a live conversation, then respectfully it probably warrants scheduling time. The author is arguing that the “udp approach” to these conversations is less intrusive, and also alleviates doubt/anxiety about the nature of the conversation.
People have different ways of communicating. I actually like getting to know my coworkers and appreciate a little fluff in my conversations. Heck, if you can make me laugh with a sassy story or a funny pun, you get brownie points and priority.
This author sounds like the type of asshole that says “I’m not here to make friends, I’m not here to be nice to you, I’m here to trade my time for money only, so go to hell.” AKA an entitled asshole.