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Comment by mushbino | Hacker News Reader

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't mind getting a "good morning" message. Why does that bother people?

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