Don't Just Say Hello | Hacker News Reader

Don't Just Say Hello

nohello.net

77 pointsninju55 comments

Funny! Not sure if it's a cultural thing, but I experienced this phenomenon with Indian and Portuguese guys, and while I'm sure they're just trying to be polite, it's annoying as hell. Just ask the damn question!

I've gotten "Hi" with zero other context from people of all backgrounds.

I just assume they are pig-butcherers, and never respond.

It is quite prevalent in India, sadly. I had this nohello.net as my Teams status - and it was construed as being rude.

There’s a term for this kind of message: phatic expression. Ie. ‘Hello, is this thing on?’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

I'd say it's the opposite of politeness in many cases. Some people do it to transfer to you the responsibility of that interaction and/or to bait into stopping what you doing to engage with them.

At one company I got so many messages like that … I just chose not to respond if they didn’t have an actual message.

One of the managers who was not a fan of mine (or anyone) tried to get me in trouble for not responding to his team (they had a habit of handing off tickets they didn’t like the look of to other teams).

I gathered up all the plain “hello” messages and sent it as my response. There were hundreds of them in a single month. My response was that I was working my own tickets and can’t stop to address “hello” messages with no context hundreds of times a month. If they have a critical situation, then they need to say so to get me to break away from my critical situation….

A read this advice a while ago, and now it hurts me every time someone goes "Hi (name)" and then you just sit there looking at the 3 dots indicating they're writing something.

Or worse,

"Hi (name)"

"How are you, all good?"

"A question"

"Do you know anything about (system)?"

"I have this problem..."

Just have a bitnof respect for my time and attention and write your damn message already.

That's not really the same thing though. They do have a bit of respect for your time and attention, they are writing your damn message already, and you know that because of the dots. The people who prompted this website are leaving the conversation trapped in purgatory until you respond.

Yeah, I mean that happens as well. Also really long ... that ends up being just a short question.

>and then you just sit there looking at the 3 dots indicating they're writing something.

I know it's not exactly your point, but I turned off the "X is typing..." indicator in Slack and it made my day to day life at work surprisingly better.

The easiest solution is to simply not respond to "hello"s. If they have a question, they'll ask.

Past submissions with hundred of comments in total for you all to enjoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nohello.net

And of nohello.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nohello.com

I often think people are wanting to know if you're there or busy and are gauging your response time for an answer. According, if I'm busy I ignore hellos 100%, but if I'm not, it type "hi" and immediately close the tab/window and spend zero effort thinking about who they are or what they might want. Their question normally follows. If the pleasantries persist, I repeat this algorithm, but replace with "never better!" (insta-close! And continue previous train of thought)

My problem with that is the answer of if I'm too busy depends on what the request/question is. Does it need a huge context switch? Is it something I like working on? Etc.

this used to bug me a lot more than it does now, perhaps because it doesn't really happen to me very often anymore. when it does, i just type "hi" back and then move on with my day.

I used to live South of the Mason/Dixon line (MD, so just barely South), and have many friends, from even farther South.

I live in New York.

These cultures have radically different approaches to communication.

New Yorkers want you to get right to the point. No dilly-dallying. I think that most of the SV Californians I've dealt with, have been similar.

They be like:

    Hey Chris,

    Do you have a published API for the Widget library that was recommended?

Southerners, on the other hand, like to "break the ice," with some small personal talk, like:

    Hey Chris,

    I hope this finds you in good spirits, and good health. Down here, we're experiencing a bit of a heat wave, so our air conditioners are running all day.

    I was writing to ask you if you have an API spec. for that library that was recommended to me...

see but both of those messages are fine by the nohello 'rules', the second one is still including the actual request together with the greeting/personal talk, as is appropriate for async communication

This used to bother me, but I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are used to working with remote people in all time zones and it's actually a check to see if I'm present. If I don't respond, they'll try someone else and get an answer faster.

The calling analogy doesn't work because the person on the other side of the phone had to pick up and is present. The "hello" is more like leaving a voicemail saying "If you're there, pick up, but you don't need to call back".

Almost all chat apps provide presence and availability information to would be chatters.

Why stop there, you don't need all words

smart guy, ahead of time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM

let's do letters next? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Minnow_Pea)

What? No one says you can't say hello. It just shouldn't be the only thing you say

Hello's an established communication protocol that allows the speaker to verify the target is available, listening and ready to initiate a conversation. I've only ever seen this site quoted to defend people's brutish behaviour. If we're going to discard centuries of consensus, I say why stop there.

If you gotta call someone for support, do you say hello and wait for them to say hello back or do you just unload your question?

> If we're going to discard centuries of consensus

are we? imo there's just a different form of consensus for async communication, a more apt comparison would perhaps be a snail-mail letter: would you send a letter with "Hello!" and wait for a reply? just include the hello with the rest of the message :P

maybe the disconnect people are having with this is whether instant messaging is actually async, or does one draw the line at email?

Almost all chat apps provide presence and availability to would-be chatters. They already know if I am available and open to chat.

Imagine in the 19th century, you receive a telegram consisting of only

  HELLO STOP

(Didn't you have to pay per message?)

> Hello's an established communication protocol that allows the speaker to verify the target is available, listening and ready to initiate a conversation

Which isn't relevant at all in asynchronous communication methods like messaging.

> If you gotta call someone for support, do you say hello and wait for them to say hello back or do you just unload your question

Phone calls and messaging are different.

Phone calls are not the same communication mechanism as instant messaging. Look at the timestamps in the mock screenshots and think about holding the other person on the phone for that long before you say your second line.

I've got 2 links permanently in my bio on Discord. One being this and the other being https://dontasktoask.com/. While the second one is more something that would happen in public channels, it is always handy to have the link around.

On IRC back in the day this was "Just Ask".

"Just Jeeves".

Yeah but you really could just guess and be right most of the time, since the question was likely "A/S/L?" ;)

"Don't ask to ask, just ask"

Another site in fact https://dontasktoask.com/

> If the other party is away, and you leave before they come back, they can still answer your question, instead of just staring at a "Hello" and wondering what they missed.

Well, you can also just send a second message if your first one doesn't get a quick response:

Hey quick question

Just wondering when project X is due

Would this be slightly better as one message? Maybe in some situations. But some people would find it to be self-centered to jump right into "what can you do for me?".

About multiple messages: this can cause multiple notifications, which can be annoying or cause a sense of urgency.

About self centered: would you find it self-centered, or would you instead appreciate seeing the complete message?

Appreciate the point about multiple notifications. I fine-tune mine so that when I'm away I don't get notifications by default. Regarding self-centeredness, reasonable minds can differ on this. Some people prefer a bit of chit-chat before getting down to brass tacks. Others want to get in and get out as quickly as possible. My point was that this is not one-size-fits-all advice.

I feel like it's fine for social chat but for technical chat I feel similar to the article.

Content origins somewhere as far back as 2007. Various site(s) maybe 2013.

EHLO is a better hello.

Good advice. Anyway, hello everyone.

Hi is a shorthand for "can you talk" or "are you on screensharing" or "is there anyone looking over your shoulder" or such things

It's not definitely a sign that I'm actually interested in greeting you, or asking about your migraine.

Just something like "how do you do" which is a total nonsense either, so this discussion is moot.

Hmm, Except most chat applications have an indicator that already answers all those questions in the basic sense. When I set myself as "in a meeting" or "busy", it means... just that. "hey I see you are busy, are you available?" doesn't make a lot of sense.

Furthermore, I can't actually answer in the shorthand, because I don't know anything about it. "can you talk?" - for how long? about what? with who? I have no idea how to respond to you.

Please, just tell me what you want - "Hi, wondering if you have 5 minutes to chat about <topic>?".

might wanna make that year reference in the text dynamic

‘sup y’all?

IM?

please dont send this to anyone unless you want your whole office to think youre a dickhead lol

Absolutely true.

I used to think I was socially awkward... but man, even at my worst I would have known better than to send this link as a response to anybody.

Do "just say hello". Be nice, life is short and relationships and people are a huge part of it.

I would consider the approach in this posting to be rude. I feel like they are shoving a bunch of information at me without context. Part of the purpose of the salutation is to allow the call receiver to orient themselves. “Who is calling?” “How urgent is this?” “Do I have time to talk now?”

This is about chats, not calls though - you can look at the context and make the same determination.

Even for calls, "hey, do you have a sec to help me troubleshoot the CDN setup?" is way better than "hello," followed by a call if you respond.

The thing with a messaging "hello" is it doesn't provide much of that information. You're only able to evaluate the time commitment and urgency by having the content of the request - a "Hello" ping on instant messenger is an attention stealer but it prevents the reader from being able to triage. It commits them to paying attention and waiting for at least part of a conversation that they may or may not have time for.

With async communication, the expectation is that they can generally take as long as they need. You put your message and maybe they'll get back to you then or in 5 minutes or in an hour, etc, but they have all the information to orient themselves on their own time.

If you just go "hello" and have this synchronous chat, then there isn't time to orient yourself, because the expectation is to respond as if you're in a face-to-face convo.

If it's a voice call, yes. But for text, folks can put the entire thing into a single message. Now you have all that data you need in one go, and you can decide if and when to answer in your own time.

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