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Comment by monkpit | Hacker News Reader

I strongly support the “no hello” concept but I also fear being seen as “that guy” so I never mention it. Sigh

I've made peace with people sending me a bare "hello" with no context. I ignore it until there's something obvious to respond to. Responding with the "no hello" webpage will often be received as (passive) aggressive, and that's a bad way to start off a conversation.

Usually within a few minutes there's followup context sent. Either the other party was already in the process of writing the followup, or they realized there was nothing actionable to respond to and they elaborate.

I should have a slack bot that replies automatically to generic greetings… that way they’ll get on with whatever the issue is and I won’t have to reply.

Ha ha, that's a great idea!

A: Hello!

B's bot: Hello to you too! I am a chatty bot which loves responding to greetings. Is there a message I can forward to B?

"No hello" implies that people shouldn't be friendly at all, and comes across as rude.

The concept simply needs a more descriptive name to be accepted. It's not about not saying hello. It's about including the actual request in the first message, usually after the hello.

I make it my status message.

I tried that on slack for a while, it made no difference. I don't think most people read the status message. The medium lends itself to the "Hi" type messages unfortunately, there's not really a way go constrain human nature, other than to not use instant messaging at all (I also tried changing my status to a note telling people to phone me, that didn't work either)

The people who need it aren’t the type of people who’d read it.

I made it my status message as well and all I got was a complaint passed along from my manager because somebody said that it was too rude and that I should be more gentle with my fellow corporate comrades...

I have seen people never ask their question after multiple days of saying "hello @user", despite having nohello as a status. And despite having asked them in the past to just ask their question and I'll respond when I can.

You just can't win.

I'd count that as a win. You avoided wasting your time answering a potentially inane question. If it were important, they would have asked.

Be that guy. In the long run it's better to be right then popular.

But then I might not survive the long run.

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