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Comment by bo1024 | Hacker News Reader

This raised the question of - why not use email instead, then?

Then answer I came up with is that the asker wants an immediate-ish response.

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?"

It doesn't sound like this problem can be easily solved with "nohello", it sounds like a more involved solution might be needed.

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Or you can just send me a brief sentence about what your problem is. So I can decide how much of a context switch it is. At my last company, I could be working on any number of problems from the front end (not likely), to infrastructure, to dealing with documentation for a customer. If you tell me what the issue is, when I do come up for air, I can decide where I place you in the queue. A “hello” goes to the bottom of the queue. I might not even put “respond to bo1234 to see what he wants.”

If I am asking a question where your response isn’t blocking me, I’ll say that...

“No rush, it’s not blocking me. I have X,Y I can be working on”.

“I’m working a little late tonight. If you’re busy, this can be a tomorrow problem.”

I personally prefer a wall of text telling me everything they have already tried. If they have already tried my first ideas, I can decide whether I have time or not.

So it sounds like you want email, or a ticketing system. Not live chat. am I right?

> 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?"

Eh, I respond a lot quicker to questions than "hello", I can ignore a hello for hours.

Email is a linked list with lots of metadata on each node, messages are an array with minimal metadata. Although modern email clients can make email threads simple and easier to follow, the UI is still much more cluttered and sometimes threading gets borked.

I agree there is a separate but interacting issue that email UIs are mostly very bad, so people like to avoid email.

Curious, are you using GSuites? Because I had very negative experiences when it comes to reading/writing email with it.

I haven't found any interface I really like, although for fun I rolled my own (along the lines of mutt, which I haven't really tried).

  From: Pointy-haired Boss <boss@manag.dept>
  Subject:

  Are you in the office today to sit together?

  phb.

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