| This article hits on a lot of good points to me, because I often see people treat chat like it's a stand-in for an IRL conversation. People will start conversations with just "Hello", and wait for me to respond, as if we're talking on the phone or something. This, to me, fundamentally misses out on the benefits of online communication: You don't need to wait to establish a conversation with me to ask me your question; you can just come out with it. And your question/problem can become just another item on my TODO list, which I can prioritize throughout the day: - If it's something I can answer/address right away, I can do so - If it's something that will take some investigation, I can start investigating it (and let you know how much time I'll need, etc) - If it's something clearly low-priority, I can wait until later when I'm not as busy to address it - If it's something that doesn't really make sense, or there are things I can explain to you to help point you in the right direction, I can spend a moment to help dig up some information for you. If you just say "Hello" (or "Ping", etc) you're taking away my ability to prioritize your question/problem, and are asking me to agree to spend time on something before I know what it is. If instead you begin the conversation with the question/problem that needs addressing, you're adding an item to my TODO queue, which can be re-sorted/re-prioritized continuously throughout the day, and allows me to be more effective. I can get to your question when it makes sense for me to do so. I have my status permanently set to http://nohello.com to hopefully drive this point home with people, and anecdotally I've seen a lot less drive-by "Hello" messages on Slack. Additionally I've just stopped responding to people when they say "Hello". I just hope that doesn't come off as me being a jerk, though... |