dfboyd
emreb
I think it is more of a if you are not there right now, and won't be able to respond, I am not going to write it all to wait for an answer later. I think most people want to make sure someone is there to respond before committing to a conversation.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
There’s more than two groups. Some people are just being friendly, behavior which is hard to exhibit when you primarily (or only) interact with someone over chat. Yes, some people are just being nervous around potentially breaching etiquette in an ironic way that happens to be a different breach of etiquette (for some, at least) but I just respond with “hi” strictly because I am interested in getting on with the conversation.
It would be rude to simply link this site (not blaming you) in response to a “hello” coming from a remote co-worker, or even a co-worker across the office who just didn’t want to walk over. They are just being friendly!
I am one who would prefer to just get on with the conversation but I also realize that’s not how everyone is and that’s okay; I should play nice with others if I want others to play nice with me and a simple “hey” in response is such an easy way to play nice.
Isamu
Ha, I’m another person that says “hey” in response, nice to know I’m not the only one with a preference for brief interruptions.
simonw
I've always been fascinated to learn more about cultural differences around this topic.
I've seen arguments in the past that different nationalities may have different norms around this kind of thing, in particular over whether it's polite to launch straight into a request for help without confirming the other person is available and receptive first.
There may be a power dynamics thing here too - if somebody is seen as being more "senior" there may be additional perceived constraints on how a conversation should be conducted.
Since you've been involved in conversations about this for more than 15 years now have you seen any credible evidence of cultural differences that come into play here?
cxr
The relevant phrases to search and which were frequently encountered online circa 2010 are "high-context" and "low-context cultures".
dosnem
Sometimes you do it because if you just ask the question you get ignored but if you say hello and get a response ppl are less likely to ignore the second question. Thats the bigger reason than any rudeness reason i would think.
CGMthrowaway
This. The selfish point (there are other points too) of "hi" is to confirm you have their attention and to remove plausible deniability of "oops I missed your message."
cxr
Weird subthread.
> The selfish point (there are other points too) of "hi" is to confirm you have their attention
No one is unsure of the selfish/self-serving motivation behind the lone "hello". The singleminded self-centeredness at the expense of others is the _entire_ basis of the criticism.
This response is like encountering in a thread about lunch theft in the workplace, "Some people take lunches that aren't theirs because they didn't bring anything and they see someone else's in the fridge." The power of this response to be able to explain something not already understood is nol—and so is its exculpatory power.
currency
People either bring email etiquette (Hi, how are you, I need...") or phone etiquette (Hi, how are you?" ...) to chat.
Email etiquette has always seemed natural to me, but a lot of people read chat as a synchronous medium, so.
It's just another place where I need to have multiple modes on hand for different people.
macspoofing
There's another reason for 'hello' ... it's a way to make sure you have the other person's attention before launching into a topic or question.
JimDabell
That’s exactly what’s rude about it. Don’t make sure you have their attention. Just send the actual message.
If it’s urgent enough that the actual message isn’t enough, “Hello” isn’t going to cut it either.
CGMthrowaway
That's only rude sometimes. We don't typically talk to other people in real life without confirming their attention (e.g. via eye contact) first.
macspoofing
I didn't make a value judgment on the practice, but it is a reason why you may get a "hello" message.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
That’s a poor reason; I just say “hi” back and tab out until there is another message. They capture my attention with details.
kevindamm
If the conversation needs that, many think that indicates it should be an email, or a meeting, not a chat.
dosnem
No way that makes sense. Email is for external conversations. Meetings are hour long.
vel0city
If the notification bubble just says "hello" it's on the bottom of the stack of my priorities. If it's "hey, this alert came up..." then it's actually going to flag my attention.
If you want my attention give me a reason to give it.
jvanderbot
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?". <long pause while the house has to be quiet until alexa times out>.
Me: "Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list". "Peanut butter added".
Some people are TCP. Some are UDP.
inopinatus
“Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list" <silence>
“Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list" <silence>
“Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list". “Peanut butter added. Peanut butter added. Peanut butter added.”
rwky
"Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list".
"It's currently raining would you like to see the forecast for tomorrow also I found this routine you might like would you like me to enable it"
writes peanut butter on a piece of paper
JdeBP
This is what you get when you don't check for PIPELINING in the EHLO response like you are supposed to. (-:
SirFatty
"Some people are TCP. Some are UDP."
Nailed it! This is going up on the wall in my office.
mariusor
> are UDP. some
:P
mafuy
Misses, sure. But it should be quite rare that the order is wrong. It would only happen if the route changes.
TeMPOraL
And some people, like me, are... what do you call TCP but without initial handshake? Like:
----
Other person: Hi, what time was that thing?
Me: Hey, 14:00.
...
...
Me: Hey, 14:00!
...
...
Me: walks in their face Hey you, the thing you asked, it's at 14:00.
Other person: Yes yes, I heard you first time!
Me: boils internally, muttering to themselves so why the fsck didn't you say so?
----
Please don't hang on "Hello", but for $deity's sake, confirm reception of messages, especially in analog communication.
simonw
Weirdly I really enjoyed MrBeast's line on this in his leaked internal production memo:
"Since we are on the topic of communication, written communication also does not constitute communication unless they confirm they read it."
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/15/how-to-succeed-in-mrbe...
illiac786
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
bombcar
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"
danaris
My whole family uses Siri—both through our phones and through the HomePod mini in the kitchen—to add items to the shopping list.
Siri occasionally misunderstands the name of the item, or needs to ask who's speaking (when on the HomePod), or has trouble because the phone of the person asking has briefly dropped off the Wifi, but in the ~5 years we've had it, I can count on one hand the number of times adding has just failed with any pattern remotely like what you describe.
bombcar
For me it's 80% accurate (including sometimes I'm entirely surprised it heard above all the screaming and howling) and then 20% it's just hilariously horribly wrong.
drcongo
Let me guess, you have an American accent?
nunorbatista
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 make much sense to me anymore. People have busy schedules, they start conversations and are interrupted, they receive hundreds of notifications and have other meetings going on.
If the worst they do to me is to say hello and never talk to me again, I'm ok with accommodating this in my daily workflow.
nmeofthestate
>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.
pas
not to mention that if someone is supposed to be a professional coordinator, they would benefit from being a good communicator. starting a discussion with "hi" and disappearing for minutes is absolutely disrespectful and shitty, not to mention the opposite of efficient.
they need to work on their time management.
SOLAR_FIELDS
I mean, maybe I’m rude but if someone just messages me Hi on slack I simply ignore it until they send something more substantial.
e_i_pi_2
> being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't make much sense to me anymore
This is the problem I run into, I want to just reply to any "Hey" message with a link to this page, but then I'm the one being rude. We just need a better way to let other people know that this isn't a good way to do async chat. I've heard of other people making their status message this site, so then people see it when they go to message you and it doesn't have to be explicitly brought up
> If the worst they do to me is to say hello and never talk to me again, I'm ok with accommodating this in my daily workflow
This I can't really get behind, because if they just send a hello it's implied that I then need to follow-up and find out what they were asking about
nirui
The example on the page don't really do it justice, because both of them are O(4), and the time delay is arbitrary.
The "" example should only consist of 3 operations: Dawn: REQUEST, Tim: RESPOND, Dawn: CLOSE. For example: "Hiya! What time was that thing?", "hey, 3:30", "Ta - seeya then!". Or even just 2, Dawn: REQUEST, Tim: RESPOND (auto close), this could imply that Dawn and Tim are really close, or really not close.
BTW: We are not designing reliable messaging protocols here folks. The chat software should tell if any message was lost.
jpl56
I have a mouse shortcut that answers "Hi" so that I dont need to reach to my keyboard to answer. But if they keep on with "How are you?", they can go to hell, I'm not answering.
susam
A similar guideline has been around on IRC networks for as long as I can remember. Many channels include it in their 'topic' or have a bot that reminds users:
Don't ask to ask, just ask.
See also <https://netsplit.de/channels/?chat=don%27t+ask+to+ask>.
cogogo
The first startup I worked at used IRC - well before slack etc. I hadn’t touched it since I was a teenager and think I managed to violate just about every internal channel guideline. Took me a minute to understand what “echan” meant.
benhurmarcel
I don't understand why messaging apps send repeated notifications for multiple messages instead of staying silent for a time. You've notified once of the first message, it's enough for the next 30s.
darajava
This always bothered me. Maybe it’s an engagement thing?
emblaegh
My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.
pards
I have several responses depending on how ornery I'm feeling
1. Respond with, "Hello. How can I help?", or
2. Wait until 5:30pm then respond, "Hello" and close my laptop for the dayDrammBA
Lately I've been going with 3. No response, people that have something important eventually follow up their lonely hello with their actual question/issue, the rest just forget about it I guess so the conversation never starts.
hombre_fatal
I don't get what this achieves since the whole reason they sent you "hello" is that they want a TCP handshake before they get on with it. So sending hello back just acks the message and they will proceed which is what they wanted.
The annoyance in TFA is that you have to do the handshake at all.
hiAndrewQuinn
Actually, when you put it like that, sending 'hello' back might be the best thing you could do. They sent you a SYN, you send back and ACK, then the real conversation can begin.
I suddenly no longer agree with TFA. This makes way more sense to me in this light.
quietbritishjim
In what way is that better than "Hello. How do I do x?" If they never reply, that's of no practical difference from just sending "Hello" and not getting a reply.
In TCP, it's useful because it happens in a different layer of abstraction. Even then, QUIC was developed (partly) because it was realised there's no point waiting for the full SYN / SYN ACK / ACK before starting some of the higher-level exchange (although the early data transfer in QUIC is used for TLS initiation rather than application-level data).
kevindamm
The relevance of TFA is that this only works if the initiating party is still connected, and to make matters worse there is no ERR_SOCKET_CLOSED returned by most chat clients if that party got distracted before seeing the ACK. Then minutes or hours later they get back "hey sorry, missed your reply, ${QUERY}"
when they could have just included `${QUERY}` in the initial send, or at least `framing(${QUERY})`.
easton
Wave emoji reaction, then I go back to what I was doing until the rest of the question lands. It's quicker!
although these days I sometimes respond "how was your weekend" to continue the pleasantries :D
defraudbah
it does not, some people don't understand it. I tried every trick and one guy was still sending his hello's because it was the way he communicated. I told him twice, literally, that he cannot just say hello and wait for me to reply, and he apologized and still didn't get it.
the only working option is to ignore such people, you cannot teach people with reasoning, it never works
jvanderbot
It opens a synchronous channel, setting social expectations for somewhat realtime responses. Most of the time I treat chat like "small email", so this is abhorrent.
krisoft
> It opens a synchronous channel, setting social expectations for somewhat realtime responses.
But do you see how that is your choice? You can just type "hello", or a longer form of the same, and then go back to work. You can then check back in about an hour to see if they managed to describe what they are looking for.
You can always change yourself, while it is so much harder to change others that it is almost futile. The true source of your distress is not them saying hello, but your understanding of that social expectation of realtime responses.
danaris
> You can always change yourself, while it is so much harder to change others that it is almost futile.
This is a defeatist attitude.
Sure, there are some people who will refuse to change no matter what. But many—probably even most—people, if you explain that this is your preferred method of communication when they have a question for you to answer, will at least try to operate that way.
dkdbejwi383
I’ll do the same - when I get around to it, which might be an hour or two after it was sent.
If the person on the other end then decides to draw out the small talk with “how are you” etc, it might take a few days for them to get an answer to their actual question, but that’s on them, it doesn’t bother me. I get to messages when I get to them. If they aren’t of substance I don’t care.
quchen
How are you?
I hope this message finds you well.
I have a question.
-------
It’s simply not a game I want to play. My mind recommends answering »state your business«, but my polite-mind tells me not to.
mbrd
If I'm feeling grumpy I don't respond, but if I have some patience left in the tank I'll use, "Hi, what's up?" which usually short-circuits the salutations.
SamPatt
Same. It's how I answer the phone too, depending on how well I know the caller. I don't think it's perceived as rude, with a friendly tone of voice.
msgodel
Hello was invented for phone conversations. It doesn't make sense if the conversation isn't verbal.
gregoriol
You can still say hi, with the first message of the day, that's a nice human touch, and not the point here: say hi + what you need to say, that's the point
msgodel
Good morning can be nice for that but if you actually have something to say make it the first part of the same message as the content.
Saying Hello or good morning and then spending multiple minutes composing your actual message while I'm attending you is extremely annoying.
Quite frankly though I don't think it makes sense to do any of that outside a group chat. Just say what you want to say and get out.
FinnKuhn
I just send it as one message. So something along the lines of:
Hi [Name],
[Message content]
busy_m
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond
JdeBP
It's related, certainly, as are mine, Charles Cazabon's, and Mark-Jason Dominus's. But it's not addressing what the headlined page is, which is largely a thing that is a behavioural issue on interactive real-time chat fora.
* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html
* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html
* https://pyropus.ca./personal/writings/12-steps-to-qmail-list...
* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.h...
* https://perl.plover.com/Questions4.html
None of us really cover the case where someone is employing a human version of the Nagle slow start algorithm. (-:
jvanderbot
This section should be required reading to get on the internet http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losin...
imiric
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.
atq2119
While you're likely right in describing the status quo, it's unfortunate that it has come to that.
The one thing that's really objectionable in that section is the last part about people who attack or flame without apparent reason. Such people should be called out by other community members in the same way ESR describes for newcomers in the first part of the section.
TeMPOraL
That's because that was not a required reading and the on-line communities (particularly around OSS) got overrun by people exhibiting the behavior in question.
rossant
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.
ryukoposting
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.
imiric
The unfortunate paradox is that the people who should understand and apply this won't bother reading it. For the rest of us, this is just common sense. So I don't think this document serves any purpose.
blcknight
These topics are so important for junior engineers to grasp, because not only is it helpful for interacting with humans, providing the additional context to LLM's will get you much, much better answers.
I wish there was a good source of this information from a less polarizing figure.
stereolambda
People can choose not to be polarized by figures, especially where the controversies are firmly offtopic.
That being said I do find the tone of this guide somewhat annoying and condescending at times. It could use some editing to make it more impersonal and to the point. Justifications and explanations could be attached separately and most people won't read them anyway. When people ask poor questions, it's often precisely because they don't read longform text for some reason.
Sheeny96
This can be a cultural thing, at least in my experience. Particularly with Indian and African colleagues, it seems to be ubiquitous amongst them.
SOLAR_FIELDS
Yep I work with a fair amount of people from India and I can definitely concur anecdotally that this is something my Indian colleagues do more often. It’s a global thing in my experience but definitely more predominant in some cultures than others
enzett
It's not the same issue, but reading about this reminds me of the litany of pleasantries required for professional communication in Japanese. You can never "just ask your question".
I'm the original author of this content. I wrote it on the internal wiki at Google in 2007. Someone copied it and posted it at nohello.(something) after I left Google. It's made the front page of HN multiple times.
The discussions always split between the people who just want to get on with the conversation and the people who can't bring themselves to do that because they consider it unforgivably rude. The second group never seem to take the hint that the first interruption is an imposition in itself.