This feels like one of those internet rules that stems from a neurodiverse IRC-type crowd
Neurotypical people use this sort of social foreplay as a way to handshake a conversation[1], where the tech types want an input/output process devoid of mood and feeling
It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions. I figure if they need to adapt to some of my quirks I'll do likewise for theirs
For me it's not because I want an input/output type conversation, it's because I want to maintain asynchronous conversation.
If I reply "I'm fine thanks how are you" then you know I'm here and looking, you've forced me to into a synchronous conversation and now I will appear rude if I don't immediately answer your "I just have a quick question"
If you just post your question upfront, I can read it and prioritize it myself based on what I am currently doing.
I'm the 'engineer' side of the equation. But often I need async interaction with various others. So I just combine it all in one message:
Hey, Jo! I just have a quick question for when you have a moment: <question for Jo>
And leave it. I'll ping Jo again at a time interval depending on urgency - sometime this sprint? I'll remind about the message in a couple days. Need it today? I indicate that when I ask, and about 4hrs later I'll poke a bit to see where we are.
Expectation setting is the missing key in a lot of these conversations. Asking to ask is about not being rude. There are better ways to do this in an asynchronous conversation. It's right up there with "we need to talk" in texts. The anxiety it causes is completely unnecessary, and easily avoided with a little detail and priority.
There are countless socially defined, implicit hammers looking for nails. Most can be improved upon or swapped out for different tools.
This is my pet peeve. You don't have a quick question. If you did, you'd just ask it. By asking to ask, you've doubled my required response effort.
Please just ask questions. Pinging someone about a mysterious question that you'll reveal later is annoying. It certainly doesn't go on my list of things to do re: "Sometime later this sprint be sure to get back to that person who won't tell me what they want from me". It goes on the list "Ignore this person"
Yup. And for the sender you don't need to wait around to know you have the go-ahead for a response, if you ask it well enough you should be good to go the next time you look. The key is to say everything you wanted to say as clearly as possible. Save everyone time and get the answers you want with the most efficiency.
A buddy of mine does this via text message. He'll ask, "hey are you working tomorrow?", and it's 50:50 whether his next question is going to be
"can you pick me up from the airport?" (forcing me to quickly reply yes even if I might not want to, because he already knows I'm not working and I don't want to seem rude—why can't he just take the train?),
or "im in town, wanna hang out tonight? (sure, sounds like fun).
Wish he'd skip the leading question and not put me in a corner.
I recommend you to read this old post about guess vs ask culture. You don't have to reply yes if you don't want to. Even if you are not working, you may have other reasons.
Because the method is indeed async, you can say "I'm fine thanks how are you" with no future expectation of immediate reply. It's okay. If they wanted sync, they would've asked for a phone call.
But, suppose you switch to sync. They ask a question. It indeed isn't important to you right now. Tell them you're busy with other tasks, and you'll reply later. It isn't rude, we all frequently work with others that have a lot on their plate.
I agree with you, but if you find yourself feeling burdened, perhaps there's a genuine opportunity for introspection: why are you feeling burdened? You don't owe them anything, they're asking you for your time. You're doing them the favor; you're under no obligation. Feeling burdened seems self-imposed.
It can be sometimes easier to shift your own perspective than it is to change the behavior of others.
Because humans have not adapted to online, emotionless, body language-less chat, and it's cumbersome and unnecessary to emulate this behavior. It's burdening the same way I have to smile and say thanks to the pizza delivery guy instead of slamming the door in his face.
> For me it's not because I want an input/output type conversation, it's because I want to maintain asynchronous conversation.
In the context of an IRC chat room, isn’t all conversation assumed to be synchronous? (Forgive me if this has an obvious answer, as I’m not too familiar with IRC culture.)
Depends if it's a busy room with a lot of actively chatting users, or a quiet room with only a few people active at once.
In either case, skipping the chitchat is beneficial. In a busy room, ask the question and if someone catches it they can respond right away. Any attempt at a "hello how are you" will likely be lost in the noise.
Exactly. I'm far from "neurotypical" but I definitely use small talk in real life when appropriate. It's just not appropriate for IRC or other media like letters, email etc.
Why would a neurodiverse person want a conversation devoid of mood and feeling? Maybe their feelings just work differently and you can't understand them.
Polling people with non-informative questions is a good way to distract them for no reason if they can't help you. I think that's impolite. As someone with ADHD, that can be disruptive and at times gets extremely frustrating because I can easily lose half an hour to a 1 minute distraction if it demands my attention. Give me some initial information to work with and I will be able to respond without losing my focus.
It’s good to remember that many of the people on here are not normal.
I had spent several weeks on an extremely technical problem when I realized Mother’s Day was coming up.
Saw a giant oversized Winnie the Pooh bear that I knew she would like.
So in my extreme logical state I was thinking I would just slice off the arms legs and heads put them in separate boxes and mail them to her for reassembly. Very elegant solution.
A bit later when my mind wasn’t so analytical I realized my mistake. Clearly her house didn’t have room for a giant bear.
So I sent her a Winnie the Pooh lamp instead. She was happy, and I didn’t need to disassemble her beloved childhood icon.
Personally it’s because I find conversations full of mood and feeling kinda boring, usually very light in substance and often gossip based
Also ADHD (inattentive) for what it’s worth. I understand the problem, I’m saying this solution is ineffective and just comes off a bit bellendary
You’re just gonna come off as some Big Bang Theory Sheldon-type asshat by giving people a massive document to read before they can besmirch your presence. Do they also have to read the XY problem article first or do you wait for them to ask a question before springing that trap card?
It’s not good optics for nerd kind and it’s way more hassle on both parties than is needed
To me conversations with substance are full of mood and feeling. I love it when I can talk about something and get actual understanding in response, or when a person talks to me and I can relate to what they're trying to express. I don't know where the "mood and feeling" is in random pleasantries and small talk; they feel empty to me.
As for prompts, it's not like you need to write a novel about what you want to discuss, just include something.
For example, when asking for help:
Bad: "Hi" -- This demands my attention because I don't know what it's about, forcing me to respond and wait for the other person. Distraction and annoyance are practically guaranteed if I ignore it. I consider this kind of opener extremely rude, because to my brain it can be functionally equivalent to screaming "GIVE ME YOUR ATTENTION NOW".
Better: "Hi! I need help with X, can you help?" -- This is a request for attention, but I can at least decide if I'm interested and if I'm too busy I can respond with "No" or "Probably, but not right now.", which is satisfactory for my brain and doesn't distract me.
Best: "Hi! X is doing A when I try to do Y and I need B, can you help?" -- I may be able to solve the problem right away, which is the best outcome.
I think that is part of it, and part is also copying a pattern that is appropriate in some situations into situations where it isn't.
Meaning: I totally agree with the article that asking to ask is a complete waste of time on Internet forums, especially technical ones. Those intro questions usually go unanswered, as they should IMO.
OTOH, what I thought the article might be about before I read it, is when people in RL say something like, "May I you ask a question?" before asking a potentially sensitive question. There are valid psychology reasons to do that in certain situations.
It's common for people to mimic conversation patterns, mostly unconsciously. They can get copied into situations where it is just a waste of time.
It's quite an assumption that people who dislike this kind of meaningless introductions are neuroatypical. I for one would more likely "ask to ask" in an offline situation, but wouldn't do it when sending a text message, because only the former makes any sense.
Is it wrong? I’ve only got my experiences to go by and I absolutely hate this social foreplay bollocks
ADHD inattentive for context, I just know you’re gonna come off looking like an ass if you force this sort of thing on anyone outside of a 2004 IRC channel
Yeah, I don’t think it’s just lazy or social habit that causes people to do this. Particularly when it’s an outsider (eg a sales person in an engineering team’s chat room) in a situation where some response is expected (eg a work environment), it can seem presumptuous to dump a question that will require a bunch of time to engage with. Asking to ask expresses “I realize I’m asking for a bunch of your time here and it’s okay if you don’t want to help [even if you could]” and it gives the room a chance to decline the question before getting far enough into it that it would appear rude to bail out.
I’m guessing a bit here from what I’ve seen. I don’t think this stuff is conscious. But I don’t feel like the authors of stuff like this are even trying to have empathy for why people do this.
You can still have your small talk. Just put it in the same message. Getting pinged for "hey" and then they spend several minutes typing was a waste of pining me when they could have just prepended "hey" to the full message.
it’s also a law of power, by asking a small question first it forces them to either be rude and ignore you or be gracious and engage, and once engaged you ask a larger question (when it's even ruder to ignore you). Political donation drives, for example, start you off with a $5 donation. obviously the social rules are different in async modes.
Hi, in my case, it's not for the reasons you imply. I'm perfectly comfortable with and appreciate the importance of the "small-talk handshake", which is more critical in person.
That said, avoiding "naked pings"[1] online is a matter of reducing the amount of mental drain for me. This is especially important for your sanity if you're actively helping out folks on a chat channel (community, or internal). As noted in my comment[1], I don't insist on this, as it doesn't help being dogmatic about it.
So I had to click through a link to find out you’re ok with, but prefer not to get, naked pings. Naked pings I had to click through a further link to find the full definition assuming I didn’t know what you were talking about
And I’m not even trying to ask you a question! See how much faff this sort of thing is?
If people doing that is non-facetiously testing your sanity, don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm, stop helping people!
Please don't be needlessly upset. First, the "link" is referring to a comment in this thread, and the fuller "definition" in the linked comment is a URL to a long email. This is how we link to things to keep messages relatively short, and avoid walls of text.
Second, I don't know what's your experience dealing with community IRC. I've been doing this open source thing for ~13 years now. In real-life IRC, it's no more of a "faff" than a 2-second gentle reminder—that too only when someone repeats the egregious behaviour. (Even this "reminder", I let it slide most of the times.)
Also, don't worry, I have a high threshold for frustration (critical to stay sane in this industry). I'm happy to help (and learn from) people; that's one the joys of working with open source communities!
No one is complaining about pleasantries, it's the fact that you're presenting nothing to start with. Just say "Hey, good morning. <Question>?"
I'm going to ignore a greeting with nothing following if I'm doing something else but if you say "Hi, we're unable to connect to the network shares, can you help?" You now have my attention.
> Neurotypical people use this sort of social foreplay as a way to handshake a conversation[1], where the tech types want an input/output process devoid of mood and feeling
Majority of "tech types" are neurotypical. Neurodiverse are minority in tech. There is more of them in tech then among teachers or something like that, but still.
And even neuroatypical use elaborate rituals before they ask question. Even autists in tech.
I understand the point you're making but I think you're focusing on the precise wording of my comment rather than the meaning
I am not a psychologist or therapist or anything, lets just assume I'm using the words wrong and grouping people inaccurately. I'm talking about the people who make internet rules like don't ask to ask vs the people that don't do that
> It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions...
No necessarily. Asking "Any Java experts around?" takes little effort, while formulating a question for a Java expert could take significant effort. A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.
This might be the rationale, but it's fundamentally very wrong. In the vast majority of "programming/tech discussion/help" spaces I frequent, the response to this is almost always going to be: "Maybe, ask your question."
It turns out that, a significant percentage of the time, the "preconditions" for the question are either:
- Way too specific (i.e. yes, even a non java expert knows what "nullpointerexception" means)
- Not nearly specific enough (i.e. no, I know Java but your issue is from a specific library with 1 page of documentation from the 90's)
This, in my opinion, is exactly what makes the 'asking to ask' so frustrating. It's impossible to know if I can answer your question without actually knowing what the question is. And if I ask what the question is, now I'm the one uncomfortable with the situation when it turns out to be something I can't help with.
edit: I also feel like it's worth noting, I'm aware that formulating a good question takes time and effort; however, in the "asking for help" / "giving help" scenario, it's very much common courtesy to do the most you can to enable people to help you. We want to help! But please ask a good question. (I do totally understand that asking good questions is a hard thing to learn, though! I started out asking very poor questions and slowly learned over time.)
Or in a broader context someone does know about. Or maybe someone's just better at getting things out of google.
For example, I once helped a co-worker who was having trouble with a toy webserver written in Go as a learning exercise. It wasn't recognizing url paths that it should have. I don't know Go, but did recognize the problem from our apache/wsgi django setup - path prefixes being stripped. Knowing the right keywords to search for, I was able to find the fix for a config file and we got it working.
> Asking "Any Java experts around?" takes little effort
which is precisely why this is annoying: it's asking for a social commitment without putting any effort in. It also reaches for the top shelf for no reason. Does the person's question really need a Java "expert"? Probably not.
> A "no" response for the first question could save you from wasting your time with the second.
Arguably if they were to find help _anywhere_ they would benefit from articulating their question in a clear and concise way. Let alone the high probability that through writing the question they might answer their own question, because we're all humans.
> A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.
That “no” is never going to happen though. Every individual might know that they aren’t a Java expert, but they don’t know that every other individual is also not an expert. So there is nobody in a position to answer “no”.
> That “no” is never going to happen though. Every individual might know that they aren’t a Java expert, but they don’t know that every other individual is also not an expert. So there is nobody in a position to answer “no”.
A lack of response is equivalent to a "no." I suppose I could have phrased it more clearly, but my though is the asker would wait for an affirmative response to proceed with investing more into asking the question.
It’s not though. I routinely ignore questions like this for questions where I am one of the experts, but I would quite often reply to a real question in the same situation.
How long are they going to wait? On low traffic asynchronous chats it's not unusual to get an answer 12 hours later, especially when the chat spans timezones.
> A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.
If I have a question that takes time to write up, I'll need to spend that time either way. Better to write the question up front so I can copy/paste it wherever I need until I get the help I need than to ask "any Java experts around" and proceed to waste anyone who responds' time while they wait for me to actually compose the question.
I don't think it's necessarily a neurotypical vs -diverse thing. It's more about social awareness that certain forms of online communication work differently from offline communication and as a consequence, different rules of etiquette apply. Remember "netiquette"?
Neurotypical people use this sort of social foreplay as a way to handshake a conversation[1], where the tech types want an input/output process devoid of mood and feeling
It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions. I figure if they need to adapt to some of my quirks I'll do likewise for theirs
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_talk#Purpose