I used to work in a big company where people would often drop a "hello" and then wait for a response before saying why they were messaging. It was mildly infuriating because I would check the internal chat about once an hour in order to remain productive. So the first time I check I see the hello, then next time I check I see what they actually wanted to say doubling the amount of time until they got a response compared to asking in one go. It doesn't need to be a single IM message but it should be sent pretty swiftly after.<p>I always wondered if people wanted to wait until the messagee was sat on the other end of the keyboard giving their full attention. If this is the case a phonecall would be more appropriate imo.
A related peeve...<p>Using chat for support. The first thing it asks is "Please explain why you need assistance"...<p>I fill it in with <i>all the pertinent details</i>...<p>Then, when the support person finally comes online their first or second message is: <i>...and how may I help you today?</i>
Chill out people. Get a little more patient and a little less nitpicky about protocol. You’re not that busy or important. None of us are.<p>This culture of nitpicking text communication styles has been with us for decades and isn’t going away soon. Same on IRC and Prestel before that. And it has always been about providing the enforcers with a sense of power and reinforcing tribalism around those who know the rules and those who need to be forcibly educated.<p>If it’s good enough for Lionel Richie, it’s good enough for you.
The most stressful version of this for me is when someone sidles up to you on chat and asks "is X working?" or "is Y supposed to do Z?"<p>Like, if you're saying it's not working: say that. If you're saying it's not doing what you expect: say that. It's the QA version of "we have to talk" and I'm instantly anxious until you clarify.
Three other things:<p>- Use spacing to make your message easy to parse.<p>- Have clear questions that are easy to jump back and respond to. Have them separated out by spacing, and preferably numbered.<p>- If there's something I need to copy paste, an email address, a specific id, a phone number, then put it on it's own line. Then I can double click and get the whole thing rather then dragging the cursor to do it.
Related thought,<p>But how do we feel about people breaking their thoughts up?<p>Into individually<p>sent<p>Messages?<p>Like this?<p>One<p>Right after<p>The other.<p>Anyone else find the constant badgering of dings and vibrations when colleagues communicate like this to be a real teeth grinder when you’re zeroed in on work (or trying to take a short pomodoro / coffee break and space out for a bit between tasks)?
This raised the question of - why not use email instead, then?<p>Then answer I came up with is that the asker wants an immediate-ish response.<p>But in this case, the "hello" makes sense not as a pleasantry, but as a way of finding out, "if I ask you a question right now, will I be able to get an immediate-ish response?"<p>It doesn't sound like this problem can be easily solved with "nohello", it sounds like a more involved solution might be needed.
I was in an IRC channel a while back that had "Don't ask to ask, ask" in its topic, because it was so common for people to join and write "May I ask a question?".
This started going inside Google quite a while back. My feeling then is about the same as now: feel free to say "hello" to me if we happen to be on the same IM system at the same time and you are "opening hailing frequencies", so to speak. I might not be there. I might not have a chance to chat right then. You can find out both without a serious investment in time pre-typing some huge thing which might be a total waste anyway.<p>It's a good opportunity to get some idea of how quickly things will move, and whether the other end is willing and able to have a solid chat at that time. This applies to being either party in the chat: the asker or the asked!<p>What's far more annoying is when the [typing] indicator goes on and stays on for a couple of minutes, at which point you are "rewarded" with a wall of text. By then, they have filibustered the chat, and are probably three steps down the wrong road if they got off on the wrong foot, and they need to be backed up and pointed in another direction.<p>If they start small and evolve it as a natural conversation with back and forths, then a whole lot of needless typing can be avoided.
People who just say "Hi" to me often don't get an answer at all.<p>I don't want to risk someone interrupting my chain of thought with some request that I can't / don't want to act on.<p>But if I respond to a "Hi" and then decide that I don't want to deal with the actual question, that's perceived as rude.<p>If you ask the question straight out, then I can decide to respond or not.
Years ago I worked with several people from UK. No subject matter will be broached until pleasantries have been exchanged. After a period of time they will ask to proceed. Then, only after a definitive "yes, go ahead" and a "no, this is not too much trouble", will they finally make their request. I found it both charming and terribly inefficient.
There is a strong counter-argument though, based on the increase of online meetings and screen sharing scenarios...
Not everybody always remembers to silence screen notifications while sharing screens.<p>Which leads to more-than-once-a-week situations of "Hi - full question or comment notification that probably shouldn't be seen by co-worker/boss/client" popping up during the share.<p>A simple "hello" --wait for answer-- protocol makes it a quick way of checking if it's a good time.
I totally agree with the sentiment represented here but thinking linking someone to this is a bad way to handle the situation with others. I think it’s best handled by asking them after they make one of these requests and they get their answer. Linking to external sites feels passive aggressive to most people who are just trying to be nice.
Pinging someone with a "hey" or "hello" isn't really the same as putting a call on hold. As the site points out, chat is asynchronous, so the recipient doesn't have to wait around as they would on hold. Plus it's a status check. With a call you have instant audio feedback to know they're on the line. Not so with chat.<p>Granted, you don't always need to establish the recipient's immediate availability. But often chat gets used for questions that need answers <i>almost now</i> but don't warrant the time and emotional investment of a phone call.<p>If you don't do a status check, you risk the recipient not being available to answer your question in time. And if they aren't, you'll waste more time typing your question than you would have with a precautionary hello.
The jist of this is you should still be polite and say Hi or Hello in your message, but include the question in the message.<p>You'll get a response much faster.<p>I'll often do something like<p>Hi <name>, <insert question>
I usually go for a combined approach: pre-type my long question in Notepad++, then post a polite "hello" immediately followed by another message with the actual question. So it's both polite and considerate.<p>It has a bonus point of not losing what you typed in case the chat window bugs out.
Please don't finish with "Ok/good" neither¹.<p>I have these VVs in my chatbox below each message, one V for delivered and one V for <i>read</i>. Please only reply if you have objections and/or questions and/or more time to think. Otherwise,<p><pre><code> silence implies consent (until reply)
</code></pre>
Another open-ended question is "when will you show up at <location> / be free?". I don't know. Maybe not today. Maybe not even this week. Because "as a cooperating peer I will either show up and help you ASAP, or negotiate the term, or maybe will delegate and not show up at all, but I can only do that <i>knowing what the deal is</i>". Don't be afraid of being imperative, just shoot your problem at me, and we'll decide. Even if you just miss my company and want to share a bottle or two. When in doubt, remember the second V rule.<p>¹ You cannot expect third parties to follow these seemingly non-polite shortcuts of course, but it makes messaging much easier for those who are your most reliable peers. Repeating the same polite handshake/TIME_WAIT routines again and again and again quickly converges to the point where it is not even remotely polite².<p>² That may sound harsh at the face value, but I seen how good relationships suffered because of exactly these sorts of conversation. A busy person will answer "yes" to "busy?" when all their contact wanted was to meet at the evening. Or "in the city, can't talk" to "where are you?" when they meant "if you're near X, do Y". But all windows close during the day and at the evening it is too late to ask again, because kids, plans, etc. Repeat that few times and both be repulsed.
Google has a whole list of these (ActionableIM, OnlyHello, ContextPlz); I'm into FastHello<p>1. Open the chat window, and type your question with no "hello". Do not press enter.
2. Instead, press Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-X to cut your question out of the chat window and into your clipboard.
3. type and send "hello"
4. Pause 2-5 seconds
5. Ctrl-P and enter to send your full question.
I grew up in IRC. I almost got fired from my first job for being to direct around sensitive colleagues. My boss coached me to start my emails with "Hello :)". I'm better but I still get into trouble from time to time, especially on a Monday morning when I forget to ask how someone's weekend was!<p>That's also a fun one because I love breaking the "my weekend was great how about you?" monotony by actually telling the truth. I remember once going for an interview and the interviewer casually asked how my weekend was as we walked through the office. He wasn't expecting me to say that I didn't have a great time because I'd spent it moving out of my ex's place and a family member passed away the same weekend. How was your weekend?<p>I mostly dislike all these fake interactions we have. Show me something real any day of the week. If you can't service my request because your mind is on something else, I'd take that. Just give me a human, not a half-assed care-less social dressage.
Part of the 'hello' problem is to get around the lack of context about what the other person is doing - particularly about who else might see their screen at that time. I still prefer just asking the question but that was the reason some others gave when I asked why they did the 'hello's.
While it's a bit annoying I never saw the problem with this.<p>The article sounds like the author will give their full attention to the chat application after replying "hello" until they receive another message.<p>You can just switch yourself to nonblocking mode and handle other events and wait until epoll marks this chat readable again, or if you don't have any sort notifications turned on, just check back when you have a second. Worst case, the person at the other end wastes their time, <i>not</i> you. If it takes you an hour, their bad. But chances are they turn to something else in the meantime and don't stare at the chat window for hours on end. Would be kinda bad if you were on vacation and accidentally left your chat client running.
This is good advice, for the people who tends to ask to ask, or surround their questions with bunch of fluff.<p>On the other hand, is you, the question-receiver. The example starts with "CO-WORKER WAITS WHILE YOU PHRASE YOUR QUESTION" but that's not how I usually deal with these types of conversations.<p>If someone just writes "Hi" to me without something else and I'm busy, I won't reply until there is more messages, and instead continue with my work.<p>Although, ideally there would be no "Hi" messages. But, not everything goes as we want it to.
What interests me about this is often I feel the person may be trying (perhaps poorly) to help you and it's just backfiring.<p>Most often it feels like an attempt to get initial attention because if they launch straight into something the start may be lost whilst the recipient is switching focus.<p>Clearly the point against this would be that you'll have the chat history available, but there are apps where the flashing up of the notifications is in the corner and they disappear inconveniently before you've focused. So perhaps I suspect it's an attempt to get that focus moved and <i>then</i> start with the payload.<p>There is some logic in this, annoying as it can be. People do really badly with focus when switching context, just look at how often someone will call you, you say your name (ie the person they were hoping to speak to usually) and then they ask if they could speak to <your name>, because they've been primed to ask this and didn't update mentally in light of new info fast enough to kill the needless question.<p>I don't advocate the initial hello, but at times, I've broken text up where I get the key detail follow up ready in advance before the initial gambit is sent. This stops it being a whopping paragraph. I'd only use this sparingly but it helps at times and there's a hint of the focus aware point in it.
This concept has to be the new[1] whathaveyoutried.com, the site which became the favourite snarky unhelpful comment on StackOverflow for a while and which the author realised was a bad and unhelpful approach and regretted making.<p>Just say "Hello" back. You don't have to wait while they are typing. And if you are busy enough that you don't want to be disturbed, put "Do not disturb" on or close the chat client.<p>[1] newer, anyway. That was 2008 to this 2013. What's the 2018 version?
I'm sorry, but are you really losing that much productivity by being a bit more human and replying to that hello, asking how the other person this? in any case, once the question is asked, you will be context switching and trying to find that answer.<p>I find that saying hello and then waiting is more practical. If the other person is busy, then they won't reply and they'll reply at a more convenient time.
if you write "hello" and they answer "hello", they are under some social obligation to answer rather promptly, whereas if you write your question first, it may simply get ignored. So I tend to write a short hello first.<p>possibly some other social factors at play here, but still, my experience.
An approach I’m using to deal with “hello”-only messages:<p>– Jog your memory for any input you might’ve been awaiting or could use from the “hello” person, and hit them back with a greeting + request or question.<p>– If they really cannot help you on anything and you are not inclined to chit-chat, just ignore the “hello” message until substance follows.<p>– If “hello” was too much of a bother at the moment, perhaps you should’ve been using DnD mode?<p>– An effective way to use DnD and remain accessible is to set up a periodic alarm to check instant messengers. If you find a lone “hello” when checking messages and you can’t think of any input you might want from that person, “hello” back and leave it until next alarm. Your counterparty will learn to get to the point quicker.
if I'm in regular communication with someone, I'll skip the hi or inline it. the hello comes in handy when I'm getting in touch with someone I might only talk to once every couple weeks. then I like to just kind of break the ice, make friendly conversation so we both can feel at ease and friendly with each other.<p>I like to be friends with my co-workers - and there are times where if you are hitting them up for an ask, and ignoring them otherwise, thet might feel like you don't value them as a person ... A greeting, a little gossip or "HR" repartée can make two people trust each other - which in the end can foster its own kind of efficiency!
I had a colleague at a company that would always start his Slack chats with “Hey” and then wait for a reply. My “response” was to not respond until he finally got the message and would continue with what he actually had to say. Worked for me but YMMV.
I had a colleague who would do exactly this in order to slack at work -> pinging someone and saying 'hello', then some time passes until the person responds, then the enquirer asks a question, then the person responds and it goes on...<p>And everytime during the stand-ups the person would be -
"Oh, I couldn't communicate the issue on time, I will continue working in the issue today..."<p>I noticed this once because we spent two hours discussing about some topic.<p>(we have a milestone-based flexible release model, milestones could be scheduled every couple of months at times, so the person would slack quite a lot)
I generally agree with this, but I also think there is a legitimate use case for saying “Hello”, namely when you have a request that actually needs a fairly imminent response and if the person you are pinging isn’t responding right away, you need to move on to someone else.<p>If you type the full message to the first person and don’t get an immediate response, as you paste the same message to other people, the first person or few people who didn’t respond immediately might waste their time duplicating work that someone else you reached is already doing.
Gotta love how programmers are so anti-social they'd rather bitch for decades about salutations than elect even a single dev to spend five minutes scripting a pleasant-reply-bot.
I always assume its because the person wants to make sure you are there before they bother to type the question. If not they will work it out themselves.<p>Never respond to hi. :)
This might be a little farfetched but is a possible solution to this having chat messages be directly previewed so that the person on the other end can see what you're typing as you do so.<p>This could bridge the gap between the speed of chatting and talking.<p>Or are there unintended cinsequences I'm not accounting for (such as accidentaly copy pasting unintended info)?
There are times I have done this if I am not sure if the person at the other end is presenting/sharing screen and the matter is somewhat sensitive.<p>If that screen sharing software world and messaging/chat software works had some sort of protocol/handshake not to step on each other, many frustrating situations can be avoided.
To add more to this I once had coworker who fist wrote 'hi' and then, in addition asked: 'Can I have a question?' (and waited for response) - it was a bit annoying, and made my style of going straight into conversation ('hi, can you <i>reason of the conversation</i>:) a bit weird, unpleasant
A related annoyance is people who hit return after every statement, so that you end up with multiple alerts for the same message, and worse, the alert you see first is for the last statement that was posted.
I've been trying to do this more myself. I have noticed that I'd get someone's attention, then start writing up what I have to say while they waited for me to finish typing.
Ought to put (2013) in the title?<p>Previously discussed
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415</a>
I always push No Hello whenever I start on a new team or at a new company. I should publish my latest revision, which I think is more kind and convincing than this original.
There’s a lot of etiquette we can use to improve chat. Another one is phrasing questions in a “search friendly” way, using log names and error strings.
I get this kind of "Hello" message all the time. Also popular are "Are you there?" or "$FIRST_NAME ?". It's one of the reasons why I much prefer e-mail to chat. With e-mail, people have to actually formulate a question before hitting "send".
The other thing that gets my goat is the person that sends every line. I guess it’s hard not to do in slack since “enter” sends, but I really wish slack would debounce messages notifications from the same person.
I really want to set this as my status message in slack, but don’t want people to think I’m rude.<p>Would you think it was rude if you saw this link as somebody’s status message?
no one is addressing the cultural difference here.
In India, people wait in chat after saying hello for a reply.They assume that other person might be busy and also from Indian perspective hi followed by asking for help or question immediately is bad. This is not the case in US where people would expect the intention right after greeting.