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by alexashka 1583 days ago
> if I end up just getting people to learn how to start a Slack DM with a question instead of just "Hi! Are you there?", well, that will also be progress.

As an ex-hi-are-you-there, let me chime in.

Unless you've had years of practice writing out your thoughts (what good programmers do for a living) and have a systematic understanding of what problem you're having and how the other person may be able to help - it is actually really hard to express yourself concisely and coherently.

People who've engaged in online forums for years or are otherwise quite intelligent just don't understand how much of a challenge this is for a lot of people.
1 comments
mushbino 1583 days ago
You do follow the Hi with a question, right? You're messaging the person because you have an actual question, I'm assuming. Why not just combine them into one whole message instead of dividing them? I'm not sure I understand where the lack of practice thing comes in.
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alexashka 1582 days ago
If people could just ask a concise question and get a concise answer, they would just do that.

But they don't. Why? For many reasons, one of which is my previous reply.

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themadturk 1582 days ago
But if they’re going to ask the question anyway, what’s so hard about just typing “Hi,…” then ask whatever rambling or imprecise thing they’re going to say before hitting enter? No one is requiring it to be concise; it’s just that they got our attention with the “Hi” and now we’re waiting five minutes for the question to be asked, instead of the question, in whatever form, appearing without the preliminaries.
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alexashka 1582 days ago
Because, it, doesn't, solve, their, problem.

If it did, they would do it, and we wouldn't be talking about it.

This also applies to all other possible 'why don't X do Y?' questions - it's nice like that.

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themadturk 1581 days ago
They could do it if it was presented to them as a norm, "this is the way we like to do messaging around here." Not everyone spontaneously comes up with the best, most effective way to do things. Sometimes they need to be taught.
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odonnellryan 1582 days ago
I don't mind getting a "good morning" message. Why does that bother people?
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