I've settled on:

    u1: <greeting><urgency><question>

The reply is almost always:

    u2: <greeting>
    u2: <response>

<off-topic>

For some reason that reminded me of this gem: http://www.bash.org/?23396

Not sure if I should be pleased or horrified with myself that it took me less than 15 seconds to find that link. :/

If you like this kind of meta-talking, there a whole scene in the movie Schizopolis that's basically like this.

Hilarious, thanks for sharing.

This is exactly what I do, and it generally has good results. I don't have to worry about being rude, because the greeting - usually a simple "Hey!" - is there for those who care about it, and my question is also right there. Makes Slack turnarounds MUCH faster.

I'm on the other side where I'm answering questions, I start with

"Hi, what is the problem you're having?", the only answer to that is exactly what I want to hear. Not "Hey what can I do for you today" or anything like that to which the answer could start with a review, or an anecdote, or whatever.

So the other side of this is greet people with direction.

Meh. More typical is

   u1: Hi, can I ask a question about the flubulator process?
   u2: Hmm... u3 owns the flubulator, unless it's frobnicator-related.
   u1: thx

And in an older company, you might find that u3 has left the company and handed it off to u4, who has touched the code just as much as you have.

Or simply use your best judgment about how to interact with individuals and to build relationships. We shouldn't rely on blanket rules because people are different. You should know if you're going to sound curt or polite or irritating or friendly, based on your own personality and that of the person you're engaging.

I feel like I'm making it sound complicated, when for most people it's the most natural thing in the world.

The problem with this is that in anything other than a small organisation, you probably don't know the individual you are starting an interaction with.

If the matter is time-sensitive then I need to ask whether the user is available or not to provide an answer.

  u1: Hi, can you switch to the alternate server, the main one is crashing

  [... 12 hours later, when the problem has already been resolved]

  u2: Sure thing, let me do it.

  u1: STOOOOOOOOOP!

Or, for sensitive context, "hey, is this alert about to pop up on a projector in front of 50 people?"

If it's sensitive I always phrase it in a way that would make the sensitive part truncated due to notification space being limited.

IMHO, a better approach is for u1 to say "nvm, john's got it" before u2 replied.

If I'm feeling snarky, I'll say

  "Looks like you've already asked a question there ;)"

A nice way to help folks is to say to them after the exchange,

  "Feel free to ask your question when you ping me so we don't have to do the hello/hi exchange"

It might work, but I'm not sure the typical person would interpret that as "nice" or "help[ful]"...

Providing helpful advice for people for free on Freenode, I think "don't ask to ask, just ask" should be made a services-level command. Y'know, just type /justask and a service bot will post the almighty phrase of concision into the selected channel. Save everybody having to make it part of their clients or keyboard macros.

Lo and behold, the domain is already setup!

https://dontasktoask.com/

thats BS. It is common courtesy to ask if its ok to ask a question.

It's a common courtesy that, in a text-chat context, ends up being less courteous than just asking. If you "ask to ask", you are wasting my time with an extra interruption that I don't need. Now I either need to sit there and stare at "readhn is typing..." until you've finished your actual question (wasting my time), or I need to go back to what I was doing, only to be interrupted again in a minute or two when you finish typing out your question.

I understand that asking to ask is a courteous thing to do in general and follows the general rules of social graces, but when you do that, you're actually wasting my time and are being less courteous.

If you really must do this, just put the ask-to-ask in the same (initial) message as the actual question. Given that the ask-to-ask query is functionally useless anyway (what asshole would say "no" to that?), you get to appear courteous while also not wasting your colleague's time.

But that in itself is asking a question!

More seriously, I never know how to respond to that question because it depends on what the question is. It feels like a trap so that I can't get out of providing an answer to a question I won't want to answer.

In person yes, but in chat I would much prefer people just ask the question. You wouldn't do that with email, why chat?

Just dropping it all at once gives them a chance to absorb the question and give a more thoughtful reply.

Obviously if the question is of a sensitive nature or needs special care then none of this applies.

That's fine, but then you must follow through on that courtesy by having the actual question ready to paste and send when the person says "yes". By taking more of their time, you're being rude, not courteous.

In my darker moments I think people don't want to take the time to type a good question and only commit to it when they believe I'll be faster than grep/google. Not sure if they realize that now I have to sit through that typing time in addition to providing help.

agreed, but the phasing can be improved. instead of "can I ask a question?" (which risks the classic sarcastic retort), ask "do you have a moment to talk about $topic". if you don't give a hint about how involved the question is, the person can't know whether they have time to answer it.

Who would ever say no? Useless question.

People who are too busy to stop what they are doing and change gears?

I find it a polite way of determining if the other party is able to give me their attention.

This really only applies to stream-based immediate communication (i.e. verbal communication). "Can I ask you a question?" is a short question that basically says "Can I take up more of your time?", as the mere act of asking someone a question is taking up time. If you just launch into your long question, the recipient has to wait for you to say your entire question before they can indicate whether they're even in a state to take questions right now.

This isn't appropriate at all for packet-based asynchronous communication. It's packet-based, meaning that receiving a short question is no faster than receiving a long question (you don't have to actually read the long question in order to receive it). It's asynchronous, meaning, if you can't answer right this moment but can in a minute, then the asker can still go ahead and ask their question.

What's more, it's outright rude in an asynchronous communication, because what you're actually doing is saying "hey can you please suspend what you're doing and have a synchronous communication with me?" when you almost certainly don't need a synchronous communication. About the only justification for this is "I don't want to type my question if nobody's around to answer it immediately, because I won't be staying long", but all I can say to that is: tough cookies.

It's even worse if you do this in group chat (like IRC), because you're now asking anyone who's around to stop what they're doing and wait for your question. So it takes the above rudeness and magnifies it by the number of people currently reading the channel.

If they are to busy to stop, they are usually also too busy to tell you they are busy.