Tavern on the Meta

9:00 PM

(We do delete the opposite too: This is great, and it worked for me!)

"A comment doesn't have enough characters to fully explain and back up that statement." - I respectfully submit that the comment I exhibit at workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5555/25356 manages to do precisely that while staying within the character limit. I'd be interested to hear if you disagree.

Tinkeringbell

Hmmm. Okay, so you're basically trying to point out that the answer doesn't answer the question of 'how to enforce quicker communication with my co-worker' even if the answer given is 'I'd say you shouldn't, as that might hurt your relationship with the co-worker'? .... I think the votes already reflect that this isn't the best answer in the whole lot of answers that are there...

Your comment, however well written, is basically saying that you don't find the answer useful, which is what votes are for (and writing other answers)

I've seen this happen a lot, whenever someone offers a perspective of 'maybe you shouldn't do this, as it might come back to hurt you'... people that have successfully done it want to comment and say 'you're wrong for saying that'

And that's discussion and not what a site needs

Mark Amery

Hmm. I think you're misunderstanding me, @Tinkeringbell

The issue is more that the asker has asked "How can I get my colleague to do behaviour X, to achieve benefit Y to me?"

Tinkeringbell

And what do you think the answer is saying?

Mark Amery

And the answerer has gone "Ah, so you want them to do behaviour X in order to achieve unrelated extraordinarily petty benefit Z? Well, don't do that. Instead, compromise by doing other behaviour W that you know violates your colleague's preferences, gets you half of extraordinarily petty benefit Z, and doesn't actually help you achieve benefit Y at all."

Tinkeringbell

9:13 PM

Hmm. I'm reading it a little differently.

Mark Amery

Where "benefit Y" is "not having to wait around for minutes while somebody types after saying hi" and "benefit Z" is "not having to to say 'hi' back"

Tinkeringbell

I'm reading it as a.) You want to make your co-worker do something b.) Your co-worker might not even be comfortable doing that, do you know for sure this is something she values? c.) you can't make people do stuff d.) this means that in order to keep the peace, you might want to sacrifice your life two minutes at a time

Like the comments on your meta pointed out, it may be a bit of a non-answer.

But I'm not familiar enough with workplace to know whether that is something they're actively disallowing or allowing...

Mark Amery

This bit seems pretty clearly like the core actionable advice of the answer, no?

> My advice is to adhere to your "nohello" policy with her when you initiate conversations with her, but to respect her own communication preferences when she's initiating the communication. In the grand scheme of things, having to reply back with "hi" to one coworker's messages may be slightly frustrating, but it isn't going to have a huge impact on your productivity. Be glad that the rest of your coworkers appear to be on board with your "nohello" policy.

Tinkeringbell

@MarkAmery Yes. So, keep to your own nohello policy (and skip the chatter when contacting her) while if she contacts you, respect her way of communicating and keep the peace between both of you.

Because the answerer feels you can't make people do stuff they don't want to do

Mark Amery

"keep to your own nohello policy (and skip the chatter when contacting her) while if she contacts you" - but why? I can understand just "don't try to change other people's behaviour" as an answer, but this is the bit that makes no sense.

In that rather than being "Don't try to change her behaviour", the answer is instead "Don't try to change her behaviour, and additionally do a thing that you know she doesn't like, for zero benefit to yourself"

Tinkeringbell

9:22 PM

@MarkAmery We're overthinking this ;)

So, don't try to force her to change means she's still allowed to write 'Hey, how are you' for starters

That doesn't mean that if OP wants to write 'Do you know where my lunch is?' he's not allowed to do so.

Mark Amery

I dunno; it seems pretty clear to me that the answerer thinks he's proposing a compromise where the asker gets what she wants when she initiates conversation, and the asker's colleague gets what she wants when she initiates conversation, and so all is fair and balances out

That's how I read:

> It's not ideal; neither of you get what you want 100% of the time.

Tinkeringbell

@MarkAmery In a way, it does and it doesn't.

Mark Amery

but that's just not true; the OP has no stated preferences about how they initiate conversation with their coworker. They may even prefer to start with pleasantries!

Travis J

For something as simple as a low ranked, low viewed, answer on a post about "How are you?" in slack, this is just a ridiculous amount of time to spend analyzing the value of a comment on that post.

Mark Amery

Defensible, Travis.

Tinkeringbell

9:27 PM

@MarkAmery Given from the way the question is written, I'd say with 99% certainty they don't like the pleasantries, or they would've dropped their own nohello policy (unless they're a massively model employee)

@TravisJ I like the exercise

Mark Amery

@Tinkeringbell I don't think that's true. They actually explicitly say this: "To be clear, my issue is not with pleasantries qua pleasantries. I don't mind chatting with coworkers around the lunch room or in the halls, or in the general-chat Slack channels."

Tinkeringbell

@MarkAmery Yeah, so they don't mind pleasantries, but they certainly don't like them during work hours!

(and lunch or halls or general chat isn't work)

That's what you do in your off-time

So, while they don't have issues with pleasantries an sich, they don't like pleasantries when they want to know where they left the stapler

or when someone starts asking them why the printer is out of paper again.

but if someone wants to start with 'hey, how are you?'

and then follow up with 'do you know why the printer is out of paper again'...

the answer says not to force an unwanted change upon that co-worker.

Mark Amery

Eh, I guess my reading is that they have a problem with the pleasantries when they are being addressed, and therefore don't have control over the timing of the conversation or when it interrupts their workflow

It doesn't follow that they wouldn't like to engage in pleasantries when they are going and initiating conversation with a coworker

Tinkeringbell

Hmmm. bit of a double edged sword that one...

Mark Amery

They might refrain out of respect for the coworker's flow, as they would like their coworkers to do to them, but that's a selfless reason, not a personal preference

Tinkeringbell

9:34 PM

They also might like to be treated a certain way, because they prefer that way themselves ;)

But now we're doing couch psychology

Mark Amery

And so if they actually know that one of their colleagues prefers to engage in some pleasantries, it seems perfectly possible to me that they'd not only be fine with that but actively enjoy that couple of minutes' distraction when they are initiating the conversation

Sure, agreed - we don't really have any evidence to know one way or the other

But I think it's in any case not the main point of the question

Tinkeringbell

So... question. This comment looks like it's yours, and it's still up. It also looks really similar to what you said in the meta post. Was that one deleted (and is now undeleted?), or ... were you just arguing with the answerer in comments?

Mark Amery

No, that one was never deleted for some reason. I agree that it's similar in spirit to the comment I mention in the Meta post; the distinction is that the one that's still up is critiquing a comment (and probably a fine example of the sort of extended argumentation in the comments that's meant to be discouraged; mea culpa), while the one the mods deleted that I describe on Meta directly critiques the answer.

Tinkeringbell

Hmmm.

Mark Amery

The one that's still up doesn't discuss the answerer's proposed "use nohello when initiating conversations with your colleague who you explicitly know doesn't like nohello" strategy

Tinkeringbell

9:45 PM

Do we know the colleague doesn't like nohello? We just did the couch psychology on the asker, are we now going to do it on the colleague? Not doing something isn't automatically actively disliking it. They may not have a problem with it, but being used to whatever they're doing or liking that better. It's like liking pizza better than pancakes, while not having to puke when eating either?

I'd say find an answer that you do like and upvote that, and downvote the answer that's already down at the bottom of the list. there's still a comment explaining why you feel the premise of 'you can take 10 seconds and say hi back' is flawed so the downvote is even explained ;)

I gotta go to sleep now. I enjoyed nitpicking this question with you though :)

Mark Amery

@Tinkeringbell That's a fair point. I guess using nohello when addressing the colleague might just be pointless instead of pointless and also annoying to the colleague :P

Alright, goodnight. :)

b_jonas

10:15 PM

Wait, so the new theme uses the same image for vote buttons on all sites, meta.stackexchange.com/content/Img/unified/… , but to make the active vote button blue instead of the default orange, it has a css filter rule on Meta SE? Crazy.

.vote-up-on, .vote-down-on { filter: invert(.5) sepia(1) hue-rotate(157.42780131deg) invert(1) invert(1) saturate(3.93672789) invert(1) invert(1) hue-rotate(-5.03354795deg) invert(1) invert(1) brightness(.91780072); }

(No filter on vote buttons that aren't active.)

The rule comes from a css whose URL has the base filename "primary-unified.css". You know, because those colors are so unified.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

10:49 PM

@b_jonas The filter style isn't supported in IE11, so the vote button shows up as orange on all sites on that browser.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, blacklisted website in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer: Dual Boot Infinite Loop issues by peterjack90512 on askubuntu.com

Somewhat

11:19 PM

Apparently "-1" comments are allowed again? Or maybe I'm missing some context/exceptions? Or I was just dreaming that it had ever happened?

Journeyman Geek

Morning

@Somewhat context?

I don't think they ever were and personally rate a nln flag at best and unkind at worst

Somewhat

@JourneymanGeek this answer on Meta Workplace.SE, but I remembered that Comment cannot contain "-1" on SO. I guess it's SO-exclusive then...

(sorry, wrong MSO link)

hmm... seems meta site (or at least MSO) is an exception...

because I failed to find this discussion on MSE, and I thought the filter is enabled globally...

Journeyman Geek

11:38 PM

Ah maybe

b_jonas

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog I see. Although that's not what really bothers me. The design how it pretends to be unified and using a single svg, and then it's kludged over with some crazy long filter rule half of which is redundant just to change the color.

They could easily just change the color in the SVG instead, but no, it has to be "unified".

I don't like using an SVG in first place, but that's a different problem, I'd have the same problem here if this was a png instead with a filter over it to turn the active arrow from blue to orange.

Journeyman Geek

@b_jonas pngs don't scale well

b_jonas

@JourneymanGeek Then put a double-size png in. It still compresses pretty well.

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