I think there’s a middle ground. “Hey, are you free to talk about Project X?” is a perfectly valid entry to something where you know an actual conversation will be needed. Likewise “I’m having trouble with the frobinator, when I run frob -x blah it gives me this error: XXX, are you able to help?” if you just need an answer.

Niceites are, well, nice. They help to make sure everyone remembers we’re all human beings rather than question answering machines, but we are also talking to get a job done. Unless you’re actually a good friend of mine if you drop me a message asking me how my weekend was, I know that you’re just lining up to ask me a question, but now I have to do The Dance to work out what it’s going to be about, whether I have time for it, and if I’m even the right person to ask.