from Hacker News

Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

by chetangoti on 3/11/22, 12:57 PM with 366 comments

by IceMetalPunk on 3/11/22, 4:49 PM
Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing anyway.
Like, come on. It's a chat app, you can see whether I'm available or not without probing. If you have something to ask/talk about, then ask/talk about it, don't wait for me to prove that my chat status is accurate. You can be friendly by saying "Hi" or whatever at the start of your message, but then include the message after. It's not hard.
Sorry... this is a huge pet peeve of mine.
by corobo on 3/11/22, 1:38 PM
This feels like one of those internet rules that stems from a neurodiverse IRC-type crowd
Neurotypical people use this sort of social foreplay as a way to handshake a conversation[1], where the tech types want an input/output process devoid of mood and feeling
It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions. I figure if they need to adapt to some of my quirks I'll do likewise for theirs
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_talk#Purpose
by Aaargh20318 on 3/11/22, 4:50 PM
I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite. The ‘hello’ is basically the start of what is the human equivalent of the TCP three way handshake.
- Hello (SYN)
> Hi (ACK)
- How are you doing ? (SYN, ACK)
Basically, they are trying to set up a synchronous channel over what is essentially an asynchronous medium. This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivided attention during the conversation.
by locusofself on 3/11/22, 4:45 PM
As much as I think this should just be common sense, when I see this URL in someone's status message/bio on a work messaging platform, it strikes me as condescending and unprofessional.
by mig39 on 3/11/22, 3:11 PM
This reminds me a lot about when people ask "Hey, are you doing anything Saturday afternoon?"
Which is trap.
Because if you say "no" then you don't have a polite excuse to decline to help someone move houses, troubleshoot a fiber install, or go for a hike.
The polite way to ask is "hey, can you help me move on Saturday? I have a truck and 3 others already."
by robbrown451 on 3/11/22, 4:53 PM
I often will say "you there?" or "you busy?"
This means I don't have a single question, it means I want to have a synchronous conversation. There are lots of reasons for the latter. This is what I would prefer people do with me as well, and if I am busy, I feel like I can ignore the message until I have a few minutes to talk (often with voice/phone)
I say this as someone working from home, thousands of miles from most people I work with and also far from most people I communicate with socially online (such as family). I find this approach of "just send a question and they can answer asynchronously" to be one of the reasons that working from home can be damaging to mental health. Natural human interactions, where there can be a real time back and forth, are positive things. Not necessarily always, but especially if I haven't communicated with a person in weeks, I'd much prefer this sort of thing.
If there is a specific topic I want to talk about, that can be expressed in a few words, sure, I'll say that. And if it really is just a simple question that can be answered directly, I'll just ask. But the point is that those are not always the case, and depending on the job each of us has and our relationship, it might be unlikely for that to be the case.
by MAGZine on 3/11/22, 4:49 PM
If someone hits me with a "hello" and nothing else, I may opt to respond with a waving emoji reaction. Not all of the time, but sometimes for sure (depending who the recipient is).
It gently encourages people to include something actionable in their first response, as it is likely they won't get a notification (or see the UI cue) that I reacted to their message. So they go about their day and will eventually come back to the dialog to see that I did indeed acknowledge them.
I like the idea of nohello.net, but in practice, it's a little crass to actually deploy effectively to colleagues.
Really the solution is to move all non-urgent communication back to email so that when someone DOES hit you with a hello, you know it's something that needs addressing ASAP, and you can entertain the conversation knowing you're unblocking something important vs. being distracted for no good reason.
by kashyapc on 3/11/22, 3:31 PM
This is also sometimes called a "naked ping"[1]:
```
  <Bob> Alice: Ping

  <Alice> Bob: Pong?

  <Bob> Alice: Can I talk to you now? I have a question.

    [LONG SILENCE...]

  <Alice> Bob: Sure. (Inside Alice's head: "Sigh, please ask the question, already!")

    [Again, in some cases, this is followed by a LONG SILENCE...]

  <Bob> Alice: A vague question with not much details.
```
Now, imagine what a test of sanity it becomes if it happens several times throughout the day, week, month.
Note, though: I don't mind "naked pings" myself; they don't bother me much. But I of course appreciate "fully dressed up pings".
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/No_naked_pings
by uses on 3/11/22, 4:18 PM
This reminds me of the chat situation where a coworker will start with "Hi!" typing indicator.
In either case, it's like "yes, you have my attention. I cannot focus on anything at all until you hit enter, and I also can't reply because I have nothing to reply to".
I also can't complain like "hey if you're going to interrupt me can you just say the whole message so I can actually reply instead of being held in absolute suspense for many seconds of my life?" because that would be, frankly, even worse than what they're doing, which was done out of a kind of ignorance of etiquette.
by dang on 3/11/22, 5:17 PM
Related (are there others?):
No Hello (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860 - Jan 2022 (67 comments)
Please don't say just hello in chat (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881800 - Jan 2021 (350 comments)
Don't ask to ask, just ask - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156 - Aug 2020 (101 comments)
No Hello (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880 - Aug 2020 (210 comments)
Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415 - April 2019 (265 comments)
Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294 - July 2017 (46 comments)
by thenerdhead on 3/11/22, 2:17 PM
This advice applies best in business settings. Business is transactional and it's very rare that someone wants to "get to know you". Those who do, will let you know by getting more involved or talking to you outside of these types of requests, not just out of the blue.
I'm a huge fan of no hello & "just ask" in our future world of async work.
https://sbmueller.github.io/nohello/
by eimrine on 3/11/22, 1:06 PM
https://nohello.net/en/
by caymanjim on 3/11/22, 5:05 PM
In my experience, this is almost entirely a regional cultural problem. I've never had an American or European coworker do the extended "hello" handshake. I've had a lot of East Asian and South American coworkers do it. I'm talking about fresh-off-the-boat (or still living there) people of other cultures. There's a strong culture of exchanging greetings and smalltalk in some places before getting to the point, especially if they're going to ask for a favor. It drives me nuts and completely backfires, because I'm less-inclined to engage with or help someone who makes me perform a social ritual before we get to the topic they're reaching out for. I tend to ignore them until content worth reacting to arrives in a message, but even ignoring a "hello" is a time-wasting distraction. By all means engage in smalltalk face-to-face if you haven't met up in a while, or even electronically if it's truly just a social call, but if we're coworkers, get to the damn point already.
by dfboyd on 3/11/22, 4:56 PM
46 points by dfboyd on Jan 23, 2021 | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
I 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".
by softwarebeware on 3/11/22, 4:34 PM
It's definitely not just a problem on IRC, Slack, or Stack Overflow. In real life, if you go up to someone and say something like, "Hey can I talk to you for a second?" The following is almost always true:
a) They do not want to talk to you for "just a second," it will take much longer. b) It is a serious conversation that will require a lot of emotional energy c) It will immediately pre-empt anything else that you are doing right now
So that's why it's bad form. You don't take that same form to total strangers on the internet.
by icedchai on 3/11/22, 2:34 PM
I don't mind a little chitchat if the person is responsive. I had one guy say "hi, can I ask you a question?" I responded within 30 seconds. The guy disappears and isn't heard from for 14+ hours. Kinda annoying.
by ChrisMarshallNY on 3/11/22, 3:55 PM
They registered an entire domain for that?
It sounds like a fairly typical StackOverflow Meta posting. I read stuff like this constantly. There's a lot of SO folks that won't answer any question, unless it has already been solved, by the asker, in their question, so they can criticize it. The place is a lot less useful, for me, these days, than it used to be. I ask excellent questions, and I don't need to have someone call me "lazy," because I didn't throw the seed into the nest.
It's not wrong, but it's also not gonna change anything. Askers gonna ask.
by throwaway5752 on 3/11/22, 4:54 PM
Either one is fine. I wish that people messaging me "hello" and their inquiry together vs separately were one of my top 500 problems.
by nineplay on 3/11/22, 3:40 PM
I'll blame stackoverflow. It's lead us to believe that anything but a precise, specific questions with clear use cases and previous attempt is going to get scolded for not meeting the guidelines.
It takes time to formulate a good tech question. "Why isn't my API getting called" is a easy question to ask but not likely to get much feedback. "Why isn't my API getting called I'm using library <X> and callback <Y> and routing framework <Z> and I've already read the documentation which says <XX> should work?" is a better question but harder to formulate. It's not surprising that someone wants to check to see if there's anyone in the void willing to answer first.
by readingnews on 3/11/22, 3:40 PM
What you really want to do is read the "how to ask questions the smart way" page by ESR:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
by trevcanhuman on 3/11/22, 1:48 PM
Very short message, but concise.
I think it very much relates to the sentiment of Nardwuar's TEDx talk: [0]. He's an interviewer. He's interviewed practically everyone alive with music, from Nicky Minaj to Kurt Cobain and back! almost every genre !
And you know what the message is from his talk ? Just ask.
You wanna do an interview with X person ? Just ask, do it!
He doesn't wait for anyone to push him, he wants to do something, he does it. He interviewed Billie Eilish and even interviewed Cobain before the 2000s !
refs
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkSUazeI2nM
by drblast on 3/11/22, 5:17 PM
I used to have this problem with our triage call center in India. I'm in the U.S. It was like pulling teeth trying to get to the point. Most annoying were the delays between pleasantries... You've interrupted what I was doing three times and then ghosted.
Them: hi
Me: Hello, how can I help you?
[Two minute wait]
Them: How are you?
Me: Great, what do you need?
[Ten minutes later]
Them: Do you have a few minutes?
Me: Am I on candid camera or something?
by alecbz on 3/11/22, 2:48 PM
> ..which is just lazy. If you're not willing to do the work to solve your problem, why should we?
Eh, don't think I agree here. The initial ask is low-effort but so is the initial response expected ("I could help, what's up?"). It seems fair to want to aim for something like:
```
    A: low effort ask
    B: low effort response
    A: high effort ask now that you know someone's listening
    B: high effort response
```
to avoid things like:
```
    A: high effort ask  
    (no one's around, effort wasted)
```
by pavlov on 3/11/22, 5:00 PM
Slack and other chat platforms could easily filter these messages and only send when the initiator has added context.
I type: “Hi”. The chat platform shows a message bubble: “Alice won’t see your message until you add some content.”
This should probably be an opt-in feature for the recipient, not a global behavior.
by uhtred on 3/11/22, 2:14 PM
This doesn't bother me so much as I would just not reply until the question comes. What pisses me off is when someone asks: "Can someone just quickly do x for me?". It trivializes the amount of work you are asking me to commit to doing. It's a task that only someone skilled in that particular technology can do. Why don't YOU quickly do it? Oh, because you can't.
by linsomniac on 3/11/22, 1:26 PM
Reminds me of that old yarn: "Can I ask you a question?" "You just did."
This makes a totally valid point in online communications.
by flashgordon on 3/11/22, 4:52 PM
I will respect a no-hello but I personally welcome hellos. I've even put it in a yes-hello on my chat bio. Some people just cannot robotically start a conv and get to the point. I am ok indulging them. If I am busy il just ask "so how can I help". I am glad we have not turned into complete APIs yet!!
by micromacrofoot on 3/11/22, 4:52 PM
Just add hello before whatever you have to say! also, no “have a minute” or anything like that, the beauty of text communication is that I can respond to it whenever I want!
If you want my undivided attention schedule a call. Send me a couple of preferred times before asking mine. You will get what you want faster.
by jonathanlydall on 3/11/22, 5:16 PM
On the topic of good communication, I have a huge pet peeve with something that I find super common with phone calls, at least over here in South Africa (I don't know what it might be like elsewhere).
Almost any time I get a call from any business, almost always from numbers don't recognize, 99% of the time the first thing the other person says to me is "Hello, how are you?".
When this happens, my first internal thought is "Excuse me, but do I know you?".
I don't think it's some deliberate sales strategy of cold callers, I suspect it's that they think of it like an in person conversation where this is perfectly acceptable with a stranger, except they fail to consider that I as the caller recipient have absolutely zero context of who I'm talking to and it's likely to piss off someone who is in a meeting or otherwise has a lot of work to do.
The professional way for someone from a business to phone you is to announce where they are calling from and what the call is in regards to, something like "Hello, I'm calling from Acme in regards to...", or "Hi, I'm Bob from Acme and I'm calling in regards to ..., how are you today?".
This way, I can instantly know whether or not it is someone from a business I have a pre-existing relationship with that I actually do probably want to talk to, as opposed to the more common caller who is cold calling me in an attempt to get me to buy something from them.
So when I get a call with "Hello, how are you?", I've now taken to responding with "Sorry, would you please first tell me where you're calling from?".
Then I'm either very friendly if it's a company I know, or for other companies I don't know I just state plainly "I don't have a pre-existing relationship with your company so I suspect this is a sales call and I don't have time calls such as these. Goodbye." and I hang up before the person even has a chance to respond.
by mabbo on 3/11/22, 3:38 PM
I feel like the author is not highly aware of social norms, nor how they change depending on context, culture, and confidence.
Many inexperienced users- the kind who often need help the most- are coming from a place of low confidence. They don't even know if this is the right place to ask this question. They don't even know if they're asking the right question. That's the nature of being inexperienced. I'm glad they're cautious and trying to be polite!
If you don't want to help such people, don't lurk in channels designed for helping people.
by kevinherron on 3/11/22, 4:49 PM
This was a problem long before we all got sent home and the proliferation Slack.
Instead, someone would just pop their head into your office: “Hey, hi, how ya doing? Can I ask you question?”
Bro, you just did. Get on with it.
by ChrisArchitect on 3/11/22, 3:42 PM
Discussion from 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156
by lhorie on 3/11/22, 3:30 PM
One step further, don't start a conversation with "X is broken, can you help me fix it?"
Tell me what you did so far, actual behavior and expected behavior. Pragmatically speaking, I get a lot of coworkers asking questions (like several per day) so if your question is formulated poorly, it has a very high chance of slipping through the cracks simply because the easier to answer questions will take priority.
by blablabla123 on 3/11/22, 1:37 PM
True words for 1:n communication. For 1:1 communication it's a different thing though. I really prefer people to warn me before dropping a bomb
by devoutsalsa on 3/11/22, 4:17 PM
I had an overly polite couch surfer from South Africa who couldn't find my place in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. He really struggled because he kept asking people "pardon me, may I ask you a question?", which is what nearly every panhandler asks before they ask you for money. I told him that he should learnt to be direct (at least in America) and simply ask for directions.
by twoodfin on 3/11/22, 4:52 PM
IMO, it depends what kind of communication you’re trying to initiate. Chat can be used for both “one-shot” asynchronous queries or notifications (the example in the link) and for synchronous, interactive discussions—chats!
If we could reach cultural consensus, it’d be great if a bare “Hello” / “Hi” / “Hey” let me know you’re attempting to initiate the latter.
by badrabbit on 3/11/22, 5:08 PM
I completley disagree with this. It depends on the person you are talking to. If this is a support chat or you are dealing with someone who is only there to take questions then yes... just state your question.
In every other scenario, when someone says hello, greet them back. Exchange small talk if you must. That is just basic human pleasentries which for some reason is not allowed when you're using a keyboard? It's politeness, don't be an ass about someone hitting you up on slack with a greeting. You are a person like any other not a support robot.
Chat rooms made for support with a "no hello" rule should be designated at work or for a n open source project when technical requests and discussions happen.
PM/DMs should have the same etiquette as a person walking up to your cubicle or office. They will knock/greet first. They won't just show up and start blurting out code snippets and urls.
by MattGaiser on 3/11/22, 4:43 PM
I often just ignore and wait for a follow up.
by jstx1 on 3/11/22, 1:39 PM
I've seen a lot of this in internal Slack channels. There's 0 probability that I'll engage someone who is looking for an "expert in $x" even if I think that I could help. The worst is when a 3rd party tags you in with a comment like "oh hey, you know about this, can you possibly help?".
by rrauenza on 3/11/22, 5:14 PM
I'm guilty of the occasional "ping" -- but often its after what I think are their normal hours (whatever that is anymore!) and its someone I've interacted with before. I don't necessarily ask the question immediately because I don't want to make them feel like they have to answer it if they're not actually working. Often it's a question that will only save me ~15 mins of time. Or there is someone else I can ask if they're not immediately available.
I personally find the anonymous "Hi $name" really annoying and it often comes on slack from a random IT person from a support ticket I've filed. Why they can't start with, "Hi $name, I'm following up on ticket XYZ. ..."
But I don't find 'ping' annoying. Weird.
by kixiQu on 3/11/22, 4:56 PM
I really feel like none of you work in an environment where people ignore inconvenient requests, which must be really nice, link your /careers page, whatever, but -- if you lead with the thing they don't want to deal with, you will be ignored more. I am intentionally spending the time to go through a round of SYN-ACK. That puts the social pressure of an ongoing conversation on the recipient to explicitly decline instead of reading the thing they don't want to hear and just ignoring it. This is more efficient than for me to try getting answers from four people, all of whom ignore messages and hope it will be someone else's problem.
(I am also guessing this is less of an issue when you're not trying to coordinate across timezones)
by aww_dang on 3/11/22, 3:18 PM
It is even worse when it comes from an inept salesperson. Asking to ask is just bigger annoyance. Worse yet, it is a terrible sales method because you'll never get to your pitch.
Intro, yes. Asking permission, no.
Use the set up to frame the discussion. Only ask questions you know the answer to. Make them answer in the affirmative repeatedly. Why give an opening for rejection at all?
Being interrupted by a sales call is bad enough. Being interrupted by someone who botches the pitch on a product I would never want and will never hear about due to ineptitude is a face palm. Humans never cease to amaze me. Not only will I marvel at the fail, but I'll write useless comments about it later.
by dbreunig on 3/11/22, 4:48 PM
People aren't APIs.
by delecti on 3/11/22, 5:08 PM
I use this link often. I'll respond to a "hi" with "hey, what's up", and turn the text into a link to this site, like [hey, what's up?](https://nohello.net/en/) (I know markup links don't work here, but that's even better as an example).
I've "trained" most people who do this to just keep going and ask their questions, rather than waiting for me to respond. Though unfortunately they mostly still break that up into several messages, so it's still more annoying than it could be.
by lamontcg on 3/11/22, 7:47 PM
Also don't use "Hey Team" as a lead-in when doing this.
I've seen "Hey Team, <asking to ask a question>" probably a thousand times now in slack channels at work to the point where it drives me completely nuts and is the best way to make me ignore you. If I'm not actually on your team where we have daily standups then unfortunately this tickles the same neurons that I have which reacts negatively to employer cheerleading nonsense about how we're all a "family" or whatever, along with reading like trolling to want to waste someone's time.
by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 3/11/22, 3:01 PM
If you really want a question answered, the best way to get your answer is to write a blog post confidently giving the incorrect answer and post it on HN and Reddit.
In the replies, you will find many answers to your question.
by teeray on 3/11/22, 5:28 PM
I feel like this is a carryover from text messaging, where people ask things like “Hey! What’s new?”
Personally, I also hate that kind of text interaction. I vastly prefer a phone call for catching up, because at least each party’s attention is fully on each other and there’s a defined end to the conversation. I’m probably in a shrinking minority with that opinion, having grown up in a time when phone calls were ubiquitous. But when someone’s glued to their phone because they don’t want to be perceived as replying too slowly, what’s the point of texting?
by codingdave on 3/11/22, 4:33 PM
We all have different personalities. Saying "hi" will frustrate some people. Not saying "hi" will tick off others. Same goes for leading into questions - most approaches can tick someone off.
For the safest approach, I agree with the concept that all the info should be in the same message. To an individual, "Hi! If you have some time, could you let me know <question>". To a group, "Hi, if there are any <topic> experts here, I'm trying to figure out <question>. Any help would be appreciated."
by pjerem on 3/11/22, 5:11 PM
I do exactly follow the no-hello "rules" but I frankly don’t care about how my colleagues reach me. We are humans, they can just say hello. I’ll answer or not depending on my availability but even if I answer and they don’t follow up, it will not ruin my day.
If I don’t want to be disturbed, I just switch the notifications off. Magic, no more hellos.
I really don’t understand why it bother people so much. And I’m saying this having strong ADHD and applying no-hello myself. There are so much more important reasons to be upset in life and at work.
by notyourwork on 3/11/22, 5:07 PM
People are so grumpy. If you don't want notifications turn them off. If I approach you in person I don't say hi and spill out a paragraph. So saying hello to start a conversation is a low friction way to have a conversation in the same we humans do in real life.
edit: Are people really so unfriendly and impersonable that a simple hello is considered offensive? For the same reason I disable most mobile apps notifications on my phone, you can do same with instant messaging. Stop blaming other people's personalities.
by zeepzeep on 3/11/22, 1:42 PM
How (not) to ask a technical question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53zkBvL4ZB4
by BiteCode_dev on 3/11/22, 5:01 PM
Technically, yes. But this is forgetting how much of this is related to social contracts.
It's not necessarly:
> I have a question about Java but I'm too lazy to actually formalize it in words unless there's someone on the channel who might be able to answer it
But it could be:
"I have a question about Java, but nobody knows me around here, so instead of flooding the chan with a wall of text, interrupting the flaw of all the discussions around, I'm doing to introduce my interruption progressively"
by ChrisArchitect on 3/11/22, 6:35 PM
See also https://nohello.net/en/ which has been posted/discussed multiple times this month and earlier nohello.com (2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860
Not a new problem, same old thing happens despite the platform. Cultural/people issue as are many.
by MaxBorsch228 on 3/11/22, 3:34 PM
I agree such meta-questions are annoying. However, I saw many times a situation when a new guy joins some Telegram chat and asks a question, only to get an avalanche of angry and overreacting "go read nometa.xyz a hundred times" replies. Of course the guy never writes to this hostile chat again: he did noting bad but was treated like a piece of shit. And it's always the same people complaining, most of chat members just don't care.
by moralestapia on 3/11/22, 5:06 PM
yeshello.net
Thank you for making me feel happy about something I never realized I had. None of the people I interact with regularly would get even minimally annoyed by getting a hello in their inbox.
I can only imagine how hellish your existence may be when you have to deal with people that are so finicky to the point that they even made a website to tell others how they may start conversations with them. What a big PITA to have them close to you ...
by dekhn on 3/11/22, 4:54 PM
My managers did this, and I realized it was because people stopped using status icons any more and just appear busy or idle all the time. They didn't want to type a long request unless they had previously established contact. I also changed to not include the entire request until the person was at least responding in real time, although I always include enough context information in the first message.
by endisneigh on 3/11/22, 4:54 PM
seems kind of dumb - the author is presupposing what the intent was. Not to mention that it's important to have the other person actually acknowledge a conversation is happening.
how about:
A: Hi!
B: What's up...?
A: Nothing just wanted to say hi!
B: Oh, haha. How's it going?
A: I was just realizing we haven't spoke in forever. Where are you these days?
=====================================================
Let's say people didn't say hi.
A: Hey we haven't spoken in forever! Where are you these days?
<< Message failed to send >>
No conversation happens.
by oxplot on 3/11/22, 4:01 PM
A response I often get is how "refreshing" it is to speak with someone who doesn't spew out fluff and gets to the point. And these are people who themselves ping-pong for 10 minutes before getting to the meat of a conversation.
This is a good example that what people do isn't necessarily what they appreciate or like. It's just a norm. Whether it's positive or not is quite a different aspect.
by felix318 on 3/11/22, 4:23 PM
A bit off-topic perhaps but as a non-native speaker I'm always baffled by English smalltalk. People who reach out to me on Teams usually start with "Hi, how are you" and I never know what is the proper reply because I know the question is not sincere. Why not just say "Hi"?
(and this is nothing compared to the seemingly mandatory Monday morning elevator "how was your weekend" question)
by jimmytucson on 3/11/22, 5:00 PM
Wanna hear something really annoying? My nephew calls me and says "hello" when I pick up the phone. Even worse, he says it like it's a question. "Hello?"
We usually end up saying it at the same time. Then he waits for me to say it again, like he didn't hear me the first time.
I find it kinda funny. It's like a power move, or a troll move, or he's just a knucklehead.
by guenthert on 3/11/22, 5:06 PM
Part of the problem is proliferation of Slack. Don't get me started on using a central server of a 3rd for-profit party, but here I just refer to asynchronous messages, e.g. inquiries, on a synchronous medium. Unless you need my attention right now, why use Slack, IRC, telephone or walk by my desk? Just send me an e-mail and be as courteous or curt as you please.
by bilater on 3/11/22, 4:58 PM
I find this super annoying in the context of getting help via chat from the support staff. They always say hi and then wait for you to reply (all this could take minutes sometimes cause they're handling multiple tickets at the same time and won't respond right away). Could just ask 'hi - what seems to be the issue?'
by svilen_dobrev on 3/11/22, 4:34 PM
These "preludes" are like tapping on the shoulder, except they are async and when you see/"feel" that "tap", there might be nobody there anymore... And then you start same thing backwards, with "hey you did have a question.." .. a forever ping- pong without any reasonable info in it..
by paulcole on 3/11/22, 4:54 PM
Are people building these single serving sites (there’s also https://dontasktoask.com/ on the HN front page right now) as part of some SEO backlink scheme? Get a couple URLs linked a bunch of places then start linking out to sites from them?
by Pxtl on 3/11/22, 4:48 PM
In terms of IM etiquette this feels so far down the list of my complaints, way behind "stop sending me screenshots to things that are available live on URLs or UNC shares".
Or like "it would be literally less work for you to copy/paste the hyperlink to the ticket than it was for you to type in the ticket ID manually".
by leephillips on 3/11/22, 3:08 PM
I agree strongly with the advice on the page. But more interesting is the fact that the author seems to have registered a domain for just this one piece of advice. I know there are other examples (some are linked) but this wouldn’t scale for me. I have so much crucial wisdom to share that the registration fees would kill me.
by russellbeattie on 3/11/22, 5:00 PM
These are the people who write one line emails with no punctuation.
We get it, you're a super mega busy person and I am just one of the many people you will interact with today, and therefore I shouldn't expect common courtesy. No worries. I'll make sure to communicate with you as little as possible from now on.
by INTPenis on 3/11/22, 5:16 PM
This is a cultural thing and it's annoying.
We have french and indian companies here in Sweden with their own culture of saying hi to everyone "good morning sir" "good morning madam", every damn morning.
They are the same ones who say "Hello how are you?" in chats now that people are working remotely more.
by reggegg on 3/11/22, 5:04 PM
Also something that goes very well with this is the age old saying, "just ask, don't ask to ask".
I always find it a bit annoying when people approach in chats just to ask if they can ask something.
Especially back in the days (yes) of IRC it was annoying because messages on a channel tend to easily drown in other messages
by spyspy on 3/11/22, 4:57 PM
What I want to know is why someone would buy a domain and build this fancy website just to make this one simple point.
Same thing also on the front page rn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639225
by _jal on 3/11/22, 4:51 PM
It is just part of a human-centric session initiation protocol.
A major reason people do it is to query presence-at-keyboard before continuing. Maybe the matter is time sensitive, maybe they don't want to disclose something immediately without setting context, finding something out first, whatever.
by Tagbert on 3/11/22, 5:14 PM
I find this particularly frustrating when the person saying “Hello” is in a different time zone. I regularly work with people who are offset by several hours and we have little to no work time overlap. That may mean that it takes 24 hours to get to the next step in the conversation.
by swarnie on 3/11/22, 5:08 PM
My company is new to messaging, only getting teams fully set up two months in to lockdown/WFH v1.
People still write messages like this...
-------------------------------------------
Hello <Name>,
<General bullshit they want to talk about>
Thanks,
<Senders name>
-------------------------------------------
I know who its to and from, its a two way chatting application... it bogles the mind sometimes.
by globular-toast on 3/11/22, 2:22 PM
I like these type of articles where someone tries to understand why they feel a certain way about something. As a long-time IRC user I definitely feel that asking to ask is wrong, but never really thought about why I feel that way. This seems to sum it up well.
by timwis on 3/11/22, 10:41 PM
This sort of attitude always made me feel like an outsider and a newb in communities. Looking back, it seems it’s just a pet peeve that has the consequence of raising the barrier to entry. There are just way more constructive and welcoming ways to say this stuff…
by Nathanael_M on 3/11/22, 4:56 PM
On one hand, this is a valuable rule that can improve communication.
On the other hand, if any one has the time to share this, they have time to say "Hey, what's up?". For a site about improving communication, it has a surprisingly irritating and condescending tone.
by hypertele-Xii on 3/11/22, 2:42 PM
Don't answer the question, provide the information the asker needs.
This is a vital design and engineering skill. Clients come to you with solutions they themselves came up with, but you're supposed to query their underlying problem and offer a better solution.
by synergyS on 3/11/22, 4:59 PM
Definitely hate when someone delivers the only hello and then just nothing for next 30mins...
by aerovistae on 3/11/22, 5:01 PM
Has anyone else noticed a serious escalation in references to this phenomenon the past couple weeks? I've seen highly upvoted posts on it both here and on reddit all of a sudden and am just curious where the momentum is coming from so abruptly.
by ipiz0618 on 3/11/22, 3:39 PM
I used to do this a lot because It thought it's more polite to check in with "can I ask you a question about <something>?". It took me way too long to realize this behavior was actually annoying lol
by gondo on 3/11/22, 2:53 PM
Sometimes you have to adjust the amount of information you are allowed to disclose depending on who you are talking to. And you don't want to exclude people based on this as any amount help can move you forward.
by ZeroGravitas on 3/11/22, 5:08 PM
Feels like you could build an auto-responder that detects this, like a low tech version of that Google feature where it screens your calls and asks them why they are calling before giving you the option to answer.
by Pxtl on 3/11/22, 4:52 PM
Usually the implication of "hello" is "hello, is now a good time, I got a complex issue that's in your area of expertise?"...
Which, I mean, is what I actually type out when I need to bug somebody.
by rplnt on 3/11/22, 5:15 PM
I've just learned to ignore those messages. It might not be nice, but if a stranger (although colleague) just says hi, what am I supposed to answer? Just say what you want. Saves time of both of us.
by debo_ on 3/11/22, 4:46 PM
Hello
by anyfactor on 3/11/22, 6:22 PM
I think when it comes to any communication, the best method is the reverse hamburger method: Meat, bun, meat.
Start with exactly what you want, no fillers. Then some fillers. Then do call to action.
by mkl95 on 3/11/22, 5:03 PM
Unless you want to tell me something that is hard or awkward to express in writing, send me a single wall of text. One topic / one initial message should be a given.
by mmaunder on 3/11/22, 4:59 PM
This comes up from time to time on HN. Humans aren't machines. As self-important and busy as you think you are, why not take a beat and respond with 'Hey' and ask them how they are.
Humans are more than just social creatures - we actually NEED social interaction to stay healthy. Remote work is hard enough. Being alone in a room for days is hard enough. Don't be afraid to remove the stick from your behind and add a little social padding to your conversations. It's good for you, and it's good for the person this site is telling you to get cranky at.
by warent on 3/11/22, 5:24 PM
These things always come across as people being surprised humans aren't just super smart chat bots. Who cares if a friendly greeting adds 2 minutes
by bregma on 3/11/22, 5:17 PM
Too many extroverts invading our nice safe online spaces ever since public health measures shut down their usual channels for in-your-face satisfaction.
by meken on 3/18/22, 6:44 PM
Regarding the “hi” ping, it would be funny to create a bot to auto respond with “hi”.
And auto respond to “how are you doing” with “good”.
The sender can now type their question.
by samanator on 3/11/22, 5:14 PM
My slack status has been the following for 2 years with great results:
(Please ask your question :slightly_smiling_face: - I won't respond to "Hi")
by rascul on 3/11/22, 5:09 PM
I've found that saying hi in a tech related chat just adds noise, but in a social chat there's no issue and can lead to conversation.

by _greim_ on 3/11/22, 5:09 PM

Corollary: In online chat, do this:

    Quick question, does the foo widget support splines?

...instead of:

    Quick question.

by toolslive on 3/11/22, 4:13 PM
X: "Can I ask you a question?"
Y: "You just did."
by hackernewds on 3/11/22, 3:55 PM
Did the author really pay for a domain per topic? Seems to be numerous others that are <title>.com
by zomg on 3/11/22, 1:36 PM
ahh, the airing of irc grievances!
by galgot on 3/11/22, 5:04 PM
When peoples find annoying to be just saluted... strange times. But I'm an old fart...
by inpdx on 3/11/22, 5:09 PM
I've always instinctively done this, although I'm generally the exzception.
by jdrc on 3/11/22, 5:03 PM
We just need chat script: If (helloGoesWell()) ask('when is that thing')
by ganzuul on 3/11/22, 2:14 PM
Why are people feeling like they need to ask to ask you?
by 11235813213455 on 3/11/22, 4:00 PM
This is actually also relevant for customer support
by vymague on 3/11/22, 2:29 PM
It's complaining for the sake of complaining. Sometimes you need to test the water first. Some online communities are rather hostile after all. As shown by this silly website.
by aaronbrethorst on 3/11/22, 5:09 PM
"got a sec?"
"sure"
[3 minutes pass]
"so, what do you think about..."
by josefrichter on 3/11/22, 4:26 PM
Always add “I tried this and that already”.
by nickysielicki on 3/11/22, 4:55 PM
Dude, chill out, they’re literally just saying hi. Not every communication in the workplace has to get right down to brass tacks.
by lwhi on 3/11/22, 5:01 PM
I find this rule annoying itself.
Take the freedom you have to communicate in any way you want, and use it.
by bigphishy on 3/11/22, 5:17 PM
GM
by asiachick on 3/11/22, 4:52 PM
i
want to
scream
when
someone
types
their
thoughts
as several
separate
messages
and seems
unaware
that
every
message
is another
notification
by jwithington on 3/11/22, 4:55 PM
thank you for making this
by notindexed on 3/11/22, 4:59 PM
gm