Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
<i>>People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request, like one would in person or on the phone - and that's great!</i><p>Different people have different reasons but I notice that many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is <i>present</i> for an immediate reply.<p>In other words, the sender deliberately wants a <i>synchronous</i> instead of asynchronous convo.<p>They don't want to type out a bunch of words for a question if the reply isn't going to happen for a few hours.<p>EDIT to reply:  <i>"Then send it in an email."</i><p>To clarify, some people <i>don't want an async</i> communication so switching to email doesn't solve their problem at all.<p>The issue is that some personality styles do not like sending questions into an <i>indeterminant void</i>.  Thus, a naked "hi" for them is shorthand for <i>"r u there to talk to me RIGHT NOW?"</i><p>I sympathize with their need for immediacy but I made a previous comment on why it drives me crazy:  <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17255452" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17255452</a><p>Yep, some people are really confused as to why many async-preference people like me do not want to answer the phone.