(in the context of “how’s it going” and similar platitudes.)
This kind of thing drives crazy the kind of people who actually want to know how someone is, because people often assume that the question is meant insincerely....I’m one of the people driven crazy.
I’m driven crazy from the other direction. Such questions usually are insincere, and I hate having to come up with what amounts to a non-sequitur answer to a question someone doesn’t mean in the first place. Checkout lines are a frequent offender. Sometimes I’ll answer literally anyway, just on the principle that honesty is a good cure for nosiness—feigned or otherwise.
Someone in another place once explained the social-ping nature of such exchanges to me, so I’ve heard most of this before. I think your explanation is clearer. The topic is interesting in a sort of why-must-this-be-complicated sense. When I want to signal my presence and willingness to communicate, I’ll often literally say “ping.” It works well enough.
When I want to signal my presence and willingness to communicate, I’ll often literally say “ping.” It works well enough.
That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. The point of running any social protocol is to be able to perform common social operations with other people (“I come in peace”; “I acknowledge your status”, etc.) without incurring the time expense and cognitive load of negotiating them through explicit communication. Rolling your own protocol is at best useless, and more likely actively off-putting: it adds another layer of inference, one that unlike the cultural standard won’t automatically be dereferenced by the people you’re talking to. Unless you already know them well, but at that point it doesn’t much matter what idiom you’re using.
Or it could work as a pretty effective bit of in-group signaling, recognized by a certain group of people even if you don’t know them. Agree with you in general though.
it adds another layer of inference, one that unlike the cultural standard won’t automatically be dereferenced by the people you’re talking to.
A substantial supermajority of people I’m actually interested in talking to will get the reference immediately. I don’t really object to just “hi,” though, or anything similar. It’s phrasing a social ping as an unmeant interrogative that bothers me. If anything, Benquo and those like him who actually mean it should agree; it confuses the signal, so if a person actually does want to know how I’m doing (or whatever), it comes across just like the fake version.
When I want to signal my presence and willingness to communicate, I’ll often literally say “ping.” It works well enough.
Rolling your own protocol is at best useless, and more likely actively off-putting: it adds another layer of inference, one that unlike the cultural standard won’t automatically be dereferenced by the people you’re talking to.
Personally, I tend to use “ping” for online scenarios where I know the people I’m talking to will automatically dereference that layer of inference. Otherwise I just use cultural standards.
Because of the online context, for me “ping” tends to substitute for “Hi” in those scenarios; while it does signal “I’m present and willing to communicate” to recipients, what I mean by it is “I’d like to talk to you; are you available right now? If not, please let me know when you next become available.” Since it’s an inquiry about the other person’s availability, it’s also very analogous to the computer networking meaning of “ping”, which may well make it easier for recipients to infer what I mean when they first see “ping” from me.
I’ve been known to use “ping” online as well, among people that I expect to understand it, but for me it usually means something along the lines of “Is your connection still up?”—not something that colloquial English has an equivalently short phrase for.
(I suppose something along the lines of SYN might adequately map to “hello”, but that’s a little nerdy even for me.)
Right now I’m willing to take the 1-2 character performance hit (in some cases the cultural standard that I’d otherwise use is “hey”, not “hi”) to make the nerdy joke.
Somewhat related to “hi” vs. “ping”: When would it be considered ‘too late’ to respond to a “hi” in an online scenario; i.e. what are the timeout rules for “hi” online? I haven’t seen those rules spelled out explicitly and I hope other readers would benefit from seeing them explicitly too. (ETA: This is directed at any readers who wish to answer, not just Nornagest.)
I find this related to “hi” vs. “ping” because often I want the recipient to respond when they get a chance, even if that’s not until several days later. Due to other factors, I’ve often been using “ping” for such messages, but I don’t know if “hi” would work (as opposed to timing out too quickly).
Well, I’m not exactly Miss Manners, but I imagine it would depend on whether you’re using a synchronous or asynchronous protocol. Replying to an email (or an email-like service, like old-style Facebook messages) days later is common enough. I’d consider an IM to have timed out after a couple of hours or when the person you’re talking to signs off, whichever comes first, and maybe less—a message to someone marked as idle would have a longer timeout expectation than to someone marked as active. If you’re looking at a moving IRC channel or something like that (player chat in MMO-style games would fall into this category), it depends how fast the channel is moving but we’re probably talking minutes.
I don’t think exact content would matter as much as context, unless you’re explicitly asking for a reply when ready (“You might not see this right away, but when you get the chance, could you...”). “Ping” would almost certainly get you the same results as a more conventional greeting, provided it’s understood. For that matter, sending cat pictures would probably get you the same results.
Hmm. The times you’ve stated do broadly align with my own experience; the only major difference is that I expected the timeout in moving IRC and MMO chats to be in the low tens of seconds. I have updated accordingly. Thank you for spelling these out.
I’m curious what the timeout would be for a ‘semi-synchronous’ protocol such as the text chats in Steam, Skype, or Google Hangouts. (These services mostly act like IMs, but all offer the ability to send messages to users who are currently offline, and some offer extended chat histories. This allows having conversations over days, and I have done so on these services.) Any opinions? (Again, directed at any readers who wish to answer.)
I’ve never sent or received cat pictures and so have no experience with their timeouts. What evidence makes you believe that sending cat pictures would a) work as a greeting and b) have the same timeouts?
I believe SMTP uses “HELO”, actually (or “EHLO” to enable some extensions). The server then indicates that it heard the HELO command, often with a cheery remark like “Pleased to meet you! I’m a server! :-D”
This is one of the more charming aspects of the internet’s plumbing.
(in the context of “how’s it going” and similar platitudes.)
I’m driven crazy from the other direction. Such questions usually are insincere, and I hate having to come up with what amounts to a non-sequitur answer to a question someone doesn’t mean in the first place. Checkout lines are a frequent offender. Sometimes I’ll answer literally anyway, just on the principle that honesty is a good cure for nosiness—feigned or otherwise.
Someone in another place once explained the social-ping nature of such exchanges to me, so I’ve heard most of this before. I think your explanation is clearer. The topic is interesting in a sort of why-must-this-be-complicated sense. When I want to signal my presence and willingness to communicate, I’ll often literally say “ping.” It works well enough.
That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. The point of running any social protocol is to be able to perform common social operations with other people (“I come in peace”; “I acknowledge your status”, etc.) without incurring the time expense and cognitive load of negotiating them through explicit communication. Rolling your own protocol is at best useless, and more likely actively off-putting: it adds another layer of inference, one that unlike the cultural standard won’t automatically be dereferenced by the people you’re talking to. Unless you already know them well, but at that point it doesn’t much matter what idiom you’re using.
Or it could work as a pretty effective bit of in-group signaling, recognized by a certain group of people even if you don’t know them. Agree with you in general though.
A substantial supermajority of people I’m actually interested in talking to will get the reference immediately. I don’t really object to just “hi,” though, or anything similar. It’s phrasing a social ping as an unmeant interrogative that bothers me. If anything, Benquo and those like him who actually mean it should agree; it confuses the signal, so if a person actually does want to know how I’m doing (or whatever), it comes across just like the fake version.
Personally, I tend to use “ping” for online scenarios where I know the people I’m talking to will automatically dereference that layer of inference. Otherwise I just use cultural standards.
Because of the online context, for me “ping” tends to substitute for “Hi” in those scenarios; while it does signal “I’m present and willing to communicate” to recipients, what I mean by it is “I’d like to talk to you; are you available right now? If not, please let me know when you next become available.” Since it’s an inquiry about the other person’s availability, it’s also very analogous to the computer networking meaning of “ping”, which may well make it easier for recipients to infer what I mean when they first see “ping” from me.
I’ve been known to use “ping” online as well, among people that I expect to understand it, but for me it usually means something along the lines of “Is your connection still up?”—not something that colloquial English has an equivalently short phrase for.
(I suppose something along the lines of SYN might adequately map to “hello”, but that’s a little nerdy even for me.)
Right now I’m willing to take the 1-2 character performance hit (in some cases the cultural standard that I’d otherwise use is “hey”, not “hi”) to make the nerdy joke.
Somewhat related to “hi” vs. “ping”: When would it be considered ‘too late’ to respond to a “hi” in an online scenario; i.e. what are the timeout rules for “hi” online? I haven’t seen those rules spelled out explicitly and I hope other readers would benefit from seeing them explicitly too. (ETA: This is directed at any readers who wish to answer, not just Nornagest.)
I find this related to “hi” vs. “ping” because often I want the recipient to respond when they get a chance, even if that’s not until several days later. Due to other factors, I’ve often been using “ping” for such messages, but I don’t know if “hi” would work (as opposed to timing out too quickly).
Well, I’m not exactly Miss Manners, but I imagine it would depend on whether you’re using a synchronous or asynchronous protocol. Replying to an email (or an email-like service, like old-style Facebook messages) days later is common enough. I’d consider an IM to have timed out after a couple of hours or when the person you’re talking to signs off, whichever comes first, and maybe less—a message to someone marked as idle would have a longer timeout expectation than to someone marked as active. If you’re looking at a moving IRC channel or something like that (player chat in MMO-style games would fall into this category), it depends how fast the channel is moving but we’re probably talking minutes.
I don’t think exact content would matter as much as context, unless you’re explicitly asking for a reply when ready (“You might not see this right away, but when you get the chance, could you...”). “Ping” would almost certainly get you the same results as a more conventional greeting, provided it’s understood. For that matter, sending cat pictures would probably get you the same results.
Hmm. The times you’ve stated do broadly align with my own experience; the only major difference is that I expected the timeout in moving IRC and MMO chats to be in the low tens of seconds. I have updated accordingly. Thank you for spelling these out.
I’m curious what the timeout would be for a ‘semi-synchronous’ protocol such as the text chats in Steam, Skype, or Google Hangouts. (These services mostly act like IMs, but all offer the ability to send messages to users who are currently offline, and some offer extended chat histories. This allows having conversations over days, and I have done so on these services.) Any opinions? (Again, directed at any readers who wish to answer.)
I’ve never sent or received cat pictures and so have no experience with their timeouts. What evidence makes you believe that sending cat pictures would a) work as a greeting and b) have the same timeouts?
I think “Hi” works very well as “ping”. It’s universally understood and shorter to write.
There are actual plain text protocols (e.g. SMTP) that do use “HI” for initiating communication.
I believe SMTP uses “HELO”, actually (or “EHLO” to enable some extensions). The server then indicates that it heard the HELO command, often with a cheery remark like “Pleased to meet you! I’m a server! :-D”
This is one of the more charming aspects of the internet’s plumbing.