I think people tend to grossly exaggerate how many emails they really do get. Are you really that damn busy that you can't spend a minute or less writing a more natural and conversational reply that indicates to the other person that you're reciprocating the amount of thought and effort they invested in their message?
I agree with some others here in saying that this is awkward. You don't strive for efficiency in social interactions. You stay an extra couple of minutes to let a friend babble on about a story you don't care about because you're socially tactful and tact is the lubricant that preserves our social relationships.
I think it's simply a suggestion to compensate for the lack of social context that we all know exists in text-based communication.
If we were working down the hall from each other I could pop my head in and ask you a quick question with enough extra social context (tone of voice, energy level, volume, facial expressions, etc.) to let you know I respect your time and just need a quick answer on something, not a full conversation, and that if you look busy and give me a short response, I won't be offended at all.
If I delivered that very same question via email, since you're a nice person you would wonder whether I would be offended by a curt response, and to err on the safe side you might spend more time answering it than I intended to ask you for. Then I feel awkward for having asked it, and there's awkwardness all around.
The problem is the age-old textual deadening of social cues, not this poster's solution, I think.
> Are you really that damn busy that you can't spend a minute or less writing a more natural and conversational reply
It's not that simple.
If I'm in the middle of a coding binge I can switch over and fire off a 'VSRE' without losing place. Converting that into a 'sociable' reply requires a mental context switch out of coding land and into human land. That doesn't cost me 2 minutes, It costs me half an hour [0]. So either the e-mail gets a terse response, or the sender waits a couple hours till I hit a mental break point in what I'm doing.
Many people do eventually get so many emails that they have to think about how to manage them better. I don't think his solution is very good - he probably should just not write back to every email, or just write back curtly without some odd acronym. People get used to it, and if they don't like it, they email you less.
It's not so much the volume, but that we tend to check e-mail in between other activities.
So, if I pop into personal email for 5 min during work hours, I don't want to have to sit and think for a few minutes to reply to one email. If I don't pop into personal email every so often, then people complain that I'm unresponsive or do really intrusive things like calling me.
> I think people tend to grossly exaggerate how many emails they really do get.
For some people it is a real problem... I get 100-300 emails a day and I know people who get a lot more. And these people aren't "well he's pg, of course everyone emails him for advice" these are just general day-to-day emails.
Personally I'm with you in valuing politeness over efficiency, but I do spend a lot of time reading and responding to emails, and sometimes I get a couple of days behind in doing so.
(Maybe my experience differs to that of many HN readers as I'm not a hacker, I work in advertising and publishing.)
The difference is that not everyone who sends an email is a personal friend and not every email truly deserves that much time, either. I've found myself with the same problem, resulting in many emails not getting a response for over a week. I'm hoping this catches on. Anyone who thinks its too impersonal should simply not indicate VSRE in their email and not worry about brevity in their replies.
Is this really something worth making an argument AGAINST?
Just as a data point for you, I get about 50 emails a day that require an answer. I'd love people to show clearly that they're happy with an answer of at most 5 words, but mostly I have to top, tail, and generally be polite.
I've timed it - many emails require at least 2 to 3 minutes for a very short, but properly composed reply. For me that's nearly 3 hours a day.
> natural and conversational reply that indicates to the other person that you're reciprocating the amount of thought and effort they invested in their message?
"If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read."
"If it took long to write, it should take long to reply to."
That's my default signature in all my email clients. If the email is actually really long and comprehensive, I just remove the signature. So far, I've gotten away with it.
Many of my most truncated email responses have come from executives and other businesspeople.
VSRE sounds great for anyone with limited time, and sufficient trust. I'd feel good using something like this with another person who I know well, or know to be businesslike. I wouldn't use this with someone I don't know well in a social context.
This is what I use Jabber for--Jabber messages have an implicit VSRE attached. In practice, it's just like email except that the replies are usually short. For me, Jabber messages get delivered to the same places on both my computer and phone, and take about the same amount of effort to respond to.
It has the added benefit of potentially being a real-time conversation as well--this sometimes happens with a flurry of short emails, but it's much more awkward.
I was hoping Google Wave would take off an neatly combine the two. But it never did :(.
One thing I've noticed is that people who expect short replies sometimes write very short mails to begin with. I think that might be more effective to set expectations than coming up with a new acronym and having to wait for it to catch on (if ever).
If the content you need a short reply to is a bit longer, you can also write a short summary before the longer part. Something like "Below is blah blah blah, wondering if you have any quick comments. Thanks, yournamehere." Then below is your multi-paragraphed whatever.
I like this idea, but I wonder about the phrasing. I wouldn't want my more... loquacious colleagues to misinterpret it as an imperative ("please do not send me a wall of text").
Interesting point. Is VSRE something that empowers the respondent to choose: A "social out from a full polite response"? Or is it a "social obligation to provide a short response?"
Then you probably shouldn't use it with them. After all, that is exactly what it's for.... OTOH, those folks probably won't pay attention, or may even protest, "it was a short reply!"
NNTR: 'no need to reply' is another common abbreviation.
Pro-tip: Use them as TextExpander snippets to avoid getting another message asking you to clarify what EOM/NNTR means as only a subset of people are familiar with & use these abbreviations.
I turned my wife onto EOM and she adopted it right away which has saved some time I am sure. I am also going to be using VSRE in upcoming messages where applicable.
How about VSRA. Very short reply accepted. VSRE can come off a bit harsh both for the sender and receiver. By using VSRA you're saying "hey, if you're real busy I won't be offended by a super short response. As others have mentioned here, the idea of VSRE can be socially awkward. By making it optional you avoid that. I suggest this not as a replacement but as an alternative. You could use VSRE with people you know well and VSRA with anyone else.
We have already quite a few alternative suggestions [1] including VSRA but we probably have to do a poll to settle on one. I have not enough karma to start one but the idea is probably doomed if several alternatives start to spread.
I starting answering emails shortly without needing to see VSRE because I'm warm enough on the first email. After that, it is all short answers unless I have a reason to do otherwise.
A fan of the idea - giving people permission is a good solution. The word "expected", however, can carry different connotations. VSRO (very short reply okay) might be friendlier?
I wish email came with a YES/NO embed button. Even a RECEIVED/READ button would be useful. Recipient can hit those buttons and move on... Sender knows the status and can move on.
I know you can embed Google Forms, but don't know if they work for all email clients. Anyone use them?
There's this one person I know well, a chatty extroverted business guy, not a socially awkward engineer, who always has extremely short, curt emails. He comes off in his emails as kind of a dick because of this, and now whenever I meet him in real life I find him annoying (when previously I wasn't annoyed at him).
It's an interesting idea, probably worth exploring.
It seems like email is exponentially getting harder to manage all the time. One thing I've noticed is if I send a reply from my phone that has the "Sent from my phone" signature on it, then people are 100% ok with short, blunt replies where they wouldn't be without that signature.
Mobile email has changed the etiquette of communication already. Even without the "Sent from my phone", people are using short replies from their cell phones and tablets. It's better for both the sender and receiver on a mobile device.
Steve Jobs was famous for his terse replies to customer emails. e.g.
customer: "Will the forthcoming iPad support tethering?"
That's what I was thinking. It'd be great to have a list of email on your phone and reply with a simple swipe menu (eg yes, no, ack, date, contact name). You could get through 10-20 emails a minute
I wonder if putting 'reply generated by short responder' at the end would make it socially acceptable
I am since a while omitting dears and wishes and being very terse in my replies. Most people seem to get the message, relax and simply reply to me with similar tone, making the whole exchange much more pleasant and less prone to misinterpretation.
Perhaps instead of adding an acronym out of the blue — that very much no-one outside HN will ever bother figuring out — we could train ourselves and our correspondants to understand that there is no need for excessive form under the majority of circumstances. The medium is very flexible, but our attitude is stuck. And maybe the reason for the stuckedness is that email, unlike less pervasive media, is used by people of every age, every degree of computer literacy, every background, etc. There: one more reason why VSRE or any variation is unlikely to make it further than a couple of days from today.
While I understand the spirit of this proposal, I vehemently oppose it.
In social interactions you DO NOT tell the recipient how to answer. You are talking to another sentient being, not a computer. VSRE comes across as an imperative, which is simply not work well for healthy communication. It basically tells the recipient (or recipients) reply my way or the highway.
It also depends on the question or how it was understood. With VSRE you are working under the assumption that your phraseology and verbiage is flawless and universally understood. Specially in a field such software development with tons of people from a ton of different cultures, VSRE will invariably cause more harm than good.
In fact, you could even suggest to your recipient, in a more amicable way to answer briefly.
VSRE, in my opinion, is the antithesis of what communication and technology should be about.
VSRE sounds like a good idea, as long as the recipient is on close enough terms to not be offended (or stifled) by "expected". (The witness will please answer with a simple "Yes" or "No".) Maybe VSRPA (Very Short Reply Perfectly Acceptable) would be more appropriate.
[+] [-] kyro|13 years ago|reply
I agree with some others here in saying that this is awkward. You don't strive for efficiency in social interactions. You stay an extra couple of minutes to let a friend babble on about a story you don't care about because you're socially tactful and tact is the lubricant that preserves our social relationships.
[+] [-] davidp|13 years ago|reply
If we were working down the hall from each other I could pop my head in and ask you a quick question with enough extra social context (tone of voice, energy level, volume, facial expressions, etc.) to let you know I respect your time and just need a quick answer on something, not a full conversation, and that if you look busy and give me a short response, I won't be offended at all.
If I delivered that very same question via email, since you're a nice person you would wonder whether I would be offended by a curt response, and to err on the safe side you might spend more time answering it than I intended to ask you for. Then I feel awkward for having asked it, and there's awkwardness all around.
The problem is the age-old textual deadening of social cues, not this poster's solution, I think.
[+] [-] mbell|13 years ago|reply
It's not that simple.
If I'm in the middle of a coding binge I can switch over and fire off a 'VSRE' without losing place. Converting that into a 'sociable' reply requires a mental context switch out of coding land and into human land. That doesn't cost me 2 minutes, It costs me half an hour [0]. So either the e-mail gets a terse response, or the sender waits a couple hours till I hit a mental break point in what I'm doing.
[0] http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|13 years ago|reply
So, if I pop into personal email for 5 min during work hours, I don't want to have to sit and think for a few minutes to reply to one email. If I don't pop into personal email every so often, then people complain that I'm unresponsive or do really intrusive things like calling me.
[+] [-] corin_|13 years ago|reply
For some people it is a real problem... I get 100-300 emails a day and I know people who get a lot more. And these people aren't "well he's pg, of course everyone emails him for advice" these are just general day-to-day emails.
Personally I'm with you in valuing politeness over efficiency, but I do spend a lot of time reading and responding to emails, and sometimes I get a couple of days behind in doing so.
(Maybe my experience differs to that of many HN readers as I'm not a hacker, I work in advertising and publishing.)
[+] [-] joetech|13 years ago|reply
Is this really something worth making an argument AGAINST?
[+] [-] ColinWright|13 years ago|reply
I've timed it - many emails require at least 2 to 3 minutes for a very short, but properly composed reply. For me that's nearly 3 hours a day.
[+] [-] b0rsuk|13 years ago|reply
"If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read."
"If it took long to write, it should take long to reply to."
[+] [-] mode80|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archivator|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colkassad|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fudged71|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlsednaoui|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewvc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rattray|13 years ago|reply
VSRE sounds great for anyone with limited time, and sufficient trust. I'd feel good using something like this with another person who I know well, or know to be businesslike. I wouldn't use this with someone I don't know well in a social context.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebbv|13 years ago|reply
Sheesh, how hard is it to type out "A one word response would be fine." It takes me less than 10 seconds to type that. C'mon.
[+] [-] alcuadrado|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tikhonj|13 years ago|reply
It has the added benefit of potentially being a real-time conversation as well--this sometimes happens with a flurry of short emails, but it's much more awkward.
I was hoping Google Wave would take off an neatly combine the two. But it never did :(.
[+] [-] asveikau|13 years ago|reply
If the content you need a short reply to is a bit longer, you can also write a short summary before the longer part. Something like "Below is blah blah blah, wondering if you have any quick comments. Thanks, yournamehere." Then below is your multi-paragraphed whatever.
[+] [-] xnxn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minikomi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatthatis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhimes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qeorge|13 years ago|reply
Often I send EOMs to imply a VSRE. For example, "Grill tonight? Have burgers. Off work @ 6. EOM"
Very interested in learning others.
[+] [-] sgpl|13 years ago|reply
Pro-tip: Use them as TextExpander snippets to avoid getting another message asking you to clarify what EOM/NNTR means as only a subset of people are familiar with & use these abbreviations.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsckin|13 years ago|reply
This one is shorter than the rest, and easy to grok. VSRE OR EOM? I'd have to look those up.
[+] [-] openmx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpatrianakos|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbruc|13 years ago|reply
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5586653
[+] [-] 3pt14159|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephfung|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemonoko|13 years ago|reply
I know you can embed Google Forms, but don't know if they work for all email clients. Anyone use them?
[+] [-] chucknibbleston|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbiggar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the1|13 years ago|reply
did you like my comment?
a) yes
b) no
[+] [-] artursapek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vectorpush|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] argonaut|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] city41|13 years ago|reply
It seems like email is exponentially getting harder to manage all the time. One thing I've noticed is if I send a reply from my phone that has the "Sent from my phone" signature on it, then people are 100% ok with short, blunt replies where they wouldn't be without that signature.
[+] [-] john_w_t_b|13 years ago|reply
Steve Jobs was famous for his terse replies to customer emails. e.g.
customer: "Will the forthcoming iPad support tethering?"
Jobs reply: "No"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8721493/The...
[+] [-] RWeaver|13 years ago|reply
I wonder if putting 'reply generated by short responder' at the end would make it socially acceptable
[+] [-] tmslnz|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps instead of adding an acronym out of the blue — that very much no-one outside HN will ever bother figuring out — we could train ourselves and our correspondants to understand that there is no need for excessive form under the majority of circumstances. The medium is very flexible, but our attitude is stuck. And maybe the reason for the stuckedness is that email, unlike less pervasive media, is used by people of every age, every degree of computer literacy, every background, etc. There: one more reason why VSRE or any variation is unlikely to make it further than a couple of days from today.
[+] [-] awkward_silence|13 years ago|reply
In social interactions you DO NOT tell the recipient how to answer. You are talking to another sentient being, not a computer. VSRE comes across as an imperative, which is simply not work well for healthy communication. It basically tells the recipient (or recipients) reply my way or the highway.
It also depends on the question or how it was understood. With VSRE you are working under the assumption that your phraseology and verbiage is flawless and universally understood. Specially in a field such software development with tons of people from a ton of different cultures, VSRE will invariably cause more harm than good.
In fact, you could even suggest to your recipient, in a more amicable way to answer briefly.
VSRE, in my opinion, is the antithesis of what communication and technology should be about.
[+] [-] fjpoblam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwilkins|13 years ago|reply