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No Hello

nohello.net

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Re: No Hello

#201

Post by yusina »

avemg wrote: post #165
emreb wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more of a if you are not there right now, and won't be able to respond, I am not going to write it all to wait for an answer later. I think most people want to make sure someone is there to respond before committing to a conversation.

But I find THAT attitude to be quite rude. You are prioritizing your preferences when it's me that you're reaching out to for help. Nobody's saying you have to write a complete and detailed problem description in your first message, but give me something to know what i'm getting into. BAD: Hey, you there? GOOD: Hey, you there? I'm trying to do X but I'm running into some issues and I wanted to get your advice. Once I…

That "GOOD" is only marginally better than just "hi". It still doesn't include the actual point, so after me replying "yes I'm here" you are not much wiser and I'm not still on the hook of having to wait for you to type the actual thing.

Re: No Hello

#202

Post by yusina »

benberryjam wrote: post #181
DrammBA wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately I've been going with 3. No response, people that have something important eventually follow up their lonely hello with their actual question/issue, the rest just forget about it I guess so the conversation never starts.

That’s what I do. There’s been plenty of times where the conversation never actually begins

And thats why you guys are working with computers and not people, cause that's pretty rude. What they are doing is only rude if they are aware that it annoys people. You response is rude nonetheless since it's a version of "that'll teach them" which is a pretty immature way of handling disagreements or conflicts.

A more mature way would be for "first offenders" to politely reply hi and help them with whatever they need and then when everything is done politely point out that asking directly would be better next time, perhaps with a link to some version of nohello.net. With "repeat offenders" sure, go ahead with what you are doing.

Re: No Hello

#203

Post by CGMthrowaway »

cxr wrote: post #162
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The selfish point (there are other points too) of "hi" is to confirm you have their attention and to remove plausible deniability of "oops I missed your message."

Weird subthread. > The selfish point (there are other points too) of "hi" is to confirm you have their attention No one is unsure of the selfish/self-serving motivation behind the lone "hello". The singleminded self-centeredness at the expense of others is the _entire_ basis of the criticism. This response is like encountering in a thread about lunch theft in the workplace, "Some people take food that isn't theirs be…

It's the confirmation of attention (the response to "hello") that removes the deniability of "I missed your message." In case that wasn't clear.

Re: No Hello

#204

Post by ryandrake »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #72
nunorbatista wrote: post #57

This is not the first time I see this here and to be honest, I was in total agreement a few years ago. In principle, I still am. Then I became a manager, I had to start dealing with more people, to navigate the enterprise environment and I understood that one of my strengths is to be understand people and to accommodate their ways of working. In this context, being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't ma…

>they start conversations and are interrupted It's not about interruption really, it's about a style of using chat apps that wastes peoples' attention and is easily avoided. > they receive hundreds of notifications okay, so this nohello thing is good advice to help reduce the noise.

I've always liked the band Kraftwerk's [past] strategy for dealing with interruptions, from their Wiki page[1]:

"... anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer since, while recording, the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite never hearing the phone ring."

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk

Re: No Hello

#205

Post by matsemann »

dosnem wrote: post #124
dfboyd wrote: post #86

I'm the original author of this content. I wrote it on the internal wiki at Google in 2007. Someone copied it and posted it at nohello.(something) after I left Google. It's made the front page of HN multiple times. The discussions always split between the people who just want to get on with the conversation and the people who can't bring themselves to do that because they consider it unforgivably rude. The second gro…

Sometimes you do it because if you just ask the question you get ignored but if you say hello and get a response ppl are less likely to ignore the second question. Thats the bigger reason than any rudeness reason i would think.

The opposite is true as well. If someone pings me hello, I might not answer immediately because I don't know if what follows will be a big or small thing, but after having replied I feel obligated to continue answering. So my decision is to not answer until I'm less busy.

If they however ask a question no hello style, I can quickly gauge if I can answer it immediately, or I should wait until a better time for me.

So the no hello might get an immediate response, the hello will wait until I can handle whatever.

Re: No Hello

#206

Post by BobaFloutist »

jvanderbot wrote: post #24
emblaegh wrote: post #5

My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.

It opens a synchronous channel, setting social expectations for somewhat realtime responses. Most of the time I treat chat like "small email", so this is abhorrent.

I hope you meant aberrant!

Re: No Hello

#207

Post by dogleash »

yusina wrote: post #202
benberryjam wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I do. There’s been plenty of times where the conversation never actually begins

And thats why you guys are working with computers and not people, cause that's pretty rude. What they are doing is only rude if they are aware that it annoys people. You response is rude nonetheless since it's a version of "that'll teach them" which is a pretty immature way of handling disagreements or conflicts. A more mature way would be for "first offenders" to politely reply hi and help them with whatever they ne…

> And thats why you guys are working with computers and not people

In my experience, even the comically over the top people-persons will be curt to chatty people if they're swamped with a task that doesn't revolve around verbal ability.

They'll also bounce back to "they won't put down and talk to me" gossip about the nerds once their deadline pressure is released. But whateves, that's life.

Re: No Hello

#208

Post by newdee »

emreb wrote: post #163
dfboyd wrote: post #86

I'm the original author of this content. I wrote it on the internal wiki at Google in 2007. Someone copied it and posted it at nohello.(something) after I left Google. It's made the front page of HN multiple times. The discussions always split between the people who just want to get on with the conversation and the people who can't bring themselves to do that because they consider it unforgivably rude. The second gro…

I think it is more of a if you are not there right now, and won't be able to respond, I am not going to write it all to wait for an answer later. I think most people want to make sure someone is there to respond before committing to a conversation.

Surely it’s more efficient (for both parties) to type and be able to read the whole thing and then respond meaningfully?

E.g. If you’ve just say “hi”, two hours later I get to my DMs and say “hey what’s up?” and you end up not following up with the “actual” message straight away, let’s say another hour later, this all took way longer than necessary.

The no-hello approach just makes sense when dealing with asynchronous messaging platforms such as Slack. IMO, not following the no-hello approach is bad etiquette and there’s a ton of people out there who still don’t really get that.

Re: No Hello

#209

Post by newdee »

illiac786 wrote: post #77
jvanderbot wrote: post #29

My wife, god bless her, is really good with people. I try very hard to mimic her, but this multi-round interaction has completely permeated how she interacts over tech, even with tech. I cannot manage it. Her: "Alexa, add to shopping list". "OK, what should I add for you". "Peanut butter". "OK, peanut butter added, what else?". . Me: "Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list". "Peanut butter added". Some people are T…

I think both methods are TCP in the sense that you’re getting some form of ACK. Maybe „some people have a larger MTU“ or „some people are jumbo frames“. Hmm, but that doesn’t sound great… „to each its own MTU.“ nah.Ok, I give up =P

I just drop malformed packets that only contain “hello”

Re: No Hello

#210

Post by newdee »

nunorbatista wrote: post #57

This is not the first time I see this here and to be honest, I was in total agreement a few years ago. In principle, I still am. Then I became a manager, I had to start dealing with more people, to navigate the enterprise environment and I understood that one of my strengths is to be understand people and to accommodate their ways of working. In this context, being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't ma…

You’re not helping people by neglecting to point out errant use of messaging platforms. It harms productivity and is something that a manager should be treating. You don’t need to be “hard” about it, but not guiding people is arguably more harmful than maybe a couple of hurt feelings. Make things better.
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