Ask Experienced Devs

I learned the concept as "1st rule of IRC: Never ask to ask." Or some variation there of.

Mh, I don't think saying hello is the problem, only when it is the only thing. I've never heard of "no hello" as a concept before. And dislike the crossed out hello images on the club website. A respectful hello as an opener to the question seems appropriate.

What immediately came to mind is "Don't ask to ask, just ask". But that's not regarding a hello opener.

StackOverflow has "How do I ask a good question?". But that's very verbose and elaborative, very extensive.

Last time I looked for something similar I didn't get anything.

The form of how questions can or should be asked depends on context as well. So I'm not sure there's something that would fit all forms of communication or platforms.

What I would likely do, if I had the need for it, is prepare a text template to copy and paste like "[Hi/Hello.] Please write your full question context in one message so there's no round-trip delay or interruptions and the intended question message completeness is obvious."

If it's just occasionally I'll just write it then and there myself.

TIL about the "no hello" concept and i love it.

I think "don't ask to ask" is more accurate. "No hello" can both lead to a misunderstanding and be the result of a misunderstanding.

I posted the nohello.com website once in my slack and then from that point on just stopped responding to hello, hi, hi tyler, etc. What @[email protected] talks about below is exactly my case:

That makes perfect sense, and I see why the habit became so commonplace; but that’s exactly why this is annoying to anyone who is highly responsive on a messaging app, especially if responding to requests for help is part of their professional work. They pay attention to their notifications, so the notifications are probably configured to be noisy. Checking a notification before it’s actionable is a waste of their time, albeit a small one.

I just don't have time to give my attention to those people. They can either get their help elsewhere or they can ask a question. I know that sounds rude, but I will help literally anyone that asks within minutes of them messaging me, so it's literally the smallest thing to ask for.

Hey, I'd greatly appreciate if your first message to me could include a summary of the problem.

This forces them to get to the point without banning pleasantries. The site you linked itself still allows a "Hello," just as long as you bundle the necessary content in that message too so nobody gets alerted and then has to spend time waiting for the real content. Something something "please do X" tends to be more friendly-sounding than "don't do Y".

Not an Experienced Dev, just got here by way of the Local feed, so let me know if I should delete.

I like to get straight to the point but I also feel rude not including a greeting (and it's reflexive at this point for me to do).

In chats I'm also the kind of person who separates their thoughts into several messages, a habit I originally developed as a kid trying to text more like other people and that is now completely internalized (and I feel it works on chat—so my long text stream is less intimidating. New paragraphs are all well and good to separate new ideas but a new text is too).

Which means even though I send a message including my problem, I also send a message with just "Hi". And the message with my problem tends to be longer and take me more time to type, so there is a delay between "Hi" and the actual issue.

…am I the problem?

Thanks for pointing this out, I'll try to remember to do better.