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No Hello

nohello.net

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Re: No Hello

#71
post #51
post #12

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

I wonder how this comes across to younger members of the hacker or scientific dev communities today. The tone, while perhaps aligned with older norms of bluntness, might now be seen as needlessly harsh or even toxic by some. It raises the question of how values around communication and community have shifted over time.

I'm 27, and it resonates. Doesn't seem like he's encouraging rude responses to bad online discourse etiquette, he's just saying those responses are likely to happen unless you follow this very reasonable set of rules.

Re: No Hello

#72

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.

Re: No Hello

#73
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it’s still silly. “Hey, I’m having some trouble figuring this thing out, here’s where I’m confused: … . It’s absurd to expect someone to play 20 questions with you to figure out what your problem is.

They probably need handholding to go through the issue and aren't good at putting into words explicitly what their issue is. Especially nontechnical and nonprogrammer people have problems around structuring and breaking down an issue into explicit parts, with a clearly formulated goal and required inputs and expected outputs etc. Most people's problem-solving relies on a collaborative thinking process where short sen…

> They probably need handholding to go through the issue and aren't good at putting into words explicitly what their issue is.

I expect that from students and children, sure. But professionals?

> Especially nontechnical and nonprogrammer people have problems around structuring and breaking down an issue into explicit parts, with a clearly formulated goal and required inputs and expected outputs etc.

Ah, they were failed by their school system. I remember being taught to think this way in my math and writing classes as a child.

Re: No Hello

#74

What a non issue? If a solution is needed, software should not notify user about mere greetings

I agree it is a non-issue. But the non-issue is a social one and thus the solution is not technology but giving feedback. A simple "Hi Greg, I noticed you opened our conversation with salutations and only send the salient topic after I replied. In the future, please send me the topic in the first message, too. I won't be offended. Thank you. Bob" usually suffices.

Re: No Hello

#75

"You still say hello!" - Uncle Leo I agree with the website. It's even worse when you have to do the "how are you?" back and forth before getting to the actual request.

This is actually an area I've been informally studying for several years. Both the "Hi" and the "How are you?" are phatic.

Phatic communication is about establishing social connection rather than conveying explicit information.

Both "Hi" and "How are you?" serve in these cases* to eatablish "this is a friendly, casual interaction" by way of social ritual. If you fail to signal non-aggression in this way then, at least neurotypical people, will be more likely to consider you an aggressor.

I don't struggle or feel bothered by "Hi" or "How are you?". But I do struggle with threading enough phatic praise and appreciation into conversation to maintain the "friendly, casual" status and can get easily start being treated as an aggressor.

* America in particular has "How are you?" as one of these phatic rituals. Different parts of the world have different rituals in different areas of interaction. This can be a cause of friction when moving to a new country and you interpret an unfamiliar ritual literally instead of phatically or misunderstand another's intent because a ritual you expect was missing.

Re: No Hello

#76
post #12

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

This section should be required reading to get on the internet http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losin...

The scenario described there would be considered harassment under modern Codes of Conduct. Describing the reaction as behaving like a "loser" is likely offensive itself.

Re: No Hello

#77

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

Re: No Hello

#78

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…

See, if you had Siri you'd be forced into the first anyway:

"Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list" "OK, what should list should I add to?" "shopping list" "Ok, what should I add for you" "Peanut butter" "Ok, playing Peanut Butter by the Royal Guardsmen on a HomePod you forgot you had"

Re: No Hello

#79

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…

“Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list"

“Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list"

“Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list". “Peanut butter added. Peanut butter added. Peanut butter added.”

Re: No Hello

#80

I see this more often when someone desires synchronous, multi-turn interaction, not simply "when is that thing starting again?". Things where they aren't exactly sure how to ask the question so they want to rely on you asking questions back and then together zeroing in on the solution of some issue.

If I need that, I send a message like "hey, you got time for a quick call to talk about x?". It's normally better to just figure out what you want to say and send it as a dm though, a call is a heavyweight escalation for rare and complex issues. It's also normally not a "question" per se, more a request for collaborative design or debugging.
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