14 ms·
Very Short Reply Expected
- leeoniya 13y agonot trying to be rude or to troll the author, but how does a post about a personal acronym make it to the front page? HN's little mysteries :) now just waiting for those downvotes...
- endgame 13y agoYou could probably call it a meat-level communication hack or something. I like it, but I'd probably use it in the subject line. Similar to how some people use <EOM> to signal that an email has no body. Now let's see if it gains traction.
- slig 13y agoAlso, if you write "EOM" in the subject, GMail won't complain about sending an email with no body.
- milfot 13y agoI still end up having to explain eom half the time.. kind of kills the intended brevity. I wonder if we could also request a RAQE without being rude.. (response to all questions expected). My pet email hate.
- leeoniya 13y ago"I still end up having to explain eom half the time.. kind of kills the intended brevity." this is why i posed the question. how many people can the author honestly expect to reach through hn and twitter or blog to make this new acronym widespread enough to actually save time. if you want a short reply just add it to your signature, "please reply briefly"
- read 13y agoThe trouble with EOM is that you still need to click on the email you received to un-bold it. EOM or not, you are still opening it.
- bluehex 13y agoIf you read your email on a desktop, or from the the gmail website I would definitely recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to click. In just a few seconds I can star all the ones in my inbox that I plan to read, and archive the rest including the EOM short mails. I do end up archiving a lot of unread mail this way but that rarely bothers me when searching for old mail.
- endgame 13y agoCheck if your client has keyboard shortcuts that can mark-as-read from the inbox summary. I know gmail and gnus both support it.
- nollidge 13y agoA) Weekends are slow news days B) It's one of those ideas that combines a very common problem with a very simple solution.
- sophacles 13y agoBecause we all deal with the too much email problem. Here's a nice solution. However, that solution won't be understood or used until it gets a critical number of eyeballs etc.
- reinhardt 13y agoBecause, honestly, that's the least uninteresting post as of this minute. At least it beats the umpteenth post about EmberJS/AngularJS/EmberJS-vs-AngularJS/. IMHO FWIW YMMV etc.
- 3pt14159 13y agoI 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.
- xnxn 13y agoI 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").
- dhimes 13y agoThen 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!"
- thatthatis 13y agoInteresting 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?"
- drivebyacct2 13y agoThat's not my perception from the "... Expected" bit, personally. It seems the social obligation would be on being short/brief.
- danbruc 13y agoMake it explicit - VSRA vs VSRE, acceptable vs expected. But this makes the whole thing unnecessarily complex and I would prefer VSRA - I am fine with getting a very short reply. If it is not possible a, long reply is also fine but try to keep it as short as possible. Different suggestions from the comments. CURT - condensed unfussy reply tolerable CURT - CURT unfussy reply tolerable NLRN - no long reply needed TCRA - très courte réponse attendue VSRA - very short reply acceptable VSRO - very short reply okay VSRW - very short reply welcome That got forked quickly. And we need a standardization committee. Or maybe a poll will do.
- cjh_ 13y agoI quite like the idea of using the OP's original phrasing of 'welcome' as I find that pleasingly polite VSRW - Very short reply welcome
- jeffehobbs 13y agonnnnnnope
- kefka 13y agoNo.
- lsiebert 13y agogood idea
- city41 13y agoIt'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.
- RWeaver 13y agoThat'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
- john_w_t_b 13y agoMobile 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?" Jobs reply: "No" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8721493/The-top-five-terse-Steve-Jobs-email-replies.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8721493/The...
- chucknibbleston 13y agoI find "VSRE" unnecessary: if you write efficiently, anyone capable of a VSR will follow suit.
- pbiggar 13y agoWriting "efficiently" can be rude. Look at his example. You can't just reply with only the word "no", because that's rude.
- heurist 13y agoWhy do you need to write a long reply to say no? His example can be shortened to: Dear John, Thank you ..., I would be happy to ... but unfortunately I am unavailable. Please [....] Sincerely, A. Guy This shortened version takes as much thought as the 'very short' version and doesn't require a new acronym. There are cases where the longer reply would work better, but most of the time you don't need to give your reasons for saying no to someone. I'd say his response is pretty formal, and that's probably unnecessary for 95% of the unsolicited email he gets. In less formal responses you can convey some enthusiasm (real or not) with an exclamation mark, and that removes the potential rudeness ("Hi John, Thanks for your interest! Unfortunately I am not available that weekend. Best of luck, A. Guy"). Translating emotion to or from text does require a little bit of effort but it's really no different than normal spoken conversation.
- StavrosK 13y ago"Efficiently" and "politely" are often opposites.
- tikhonj 13y agoThis 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 :(.
- notatoad 13y agoJabber (or any other IM) carries an implicit expectation of synchronicity though. When i get an IM, i assume it requires an immediate response. A VSRE email would require a short response at your convenience.
- micampe 13y ago> I was hoping Google Wave would take off an neatly combine the two. This is the best thing about Facebook messages: they’re hafway between chat and email and a conversation can seamlessly morph from one form to the other and back.
- slig 13y agoFacebook messages suck. - You can't read them without announcing that you did. - FB parses and might even censor you message if it contains blacklisted domains.
- rdl 13y agoI actually really like facebook messages (except for the security issues); I tend to use them for social messages with my facebook friends (which is essentially a superset of my real life friends). I use it to message my girlfriend (tied with iMessage) about "when do you want me to pick you up from work", etc. (The obnoxious thing is that both of our phones are Verizon iPhones; there's no simultaneous voice and data, and unlike me, she tends to do long voice calls with people. I'm trying to get her to switch to a SIP client, so we can do G.722 wideband and crypto/vpn on the voice too, and non-extortionate international long distance.)
- Xanthius 13y agoI'd want to maintain the French aspect, esp if it's an alternative to RSVP.... Strictly: Très courte réponse attendue. My preferred: Tout courte réponse attendue. So maybe TCRA instead of VSRA...?
- philwelch 13y agoDear god, why? That's just cargo culting.
- olouv 13y ago"tout courte réponse" is not correct french, "very short reply expected" would translate to "très courte réponse attendue", but lucky you, it starts with the same letter. "toute courte réponse" would be roughly acceptable, but more familiar language.
- josephfung 13y agoA 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?
- jere 13y agoTwitter? Seriously though, I'd rather have this built into an email system than relying on people to start understanding and following acronyms.
- klodolph 13y agoWell, we already understand and follow RSVP, and that's not even English.
- Goladus 13y agoThat developed organically over many years. RSVP is an now a valid (if peculiar) English word.
- klodolph 13y agoCould you elaborate on "developed organically" and "many years"? It seems apparent to me that at some point, someone used the word RSVP for the first time without explaining what it meant. Perhaps by "developed organically" you mean "it happened so long ago that it seems natural now?"
- Goladus 13y agoNo, I do not mean that it happened so long ago that it seems natural now. I mean that no one ever had to force it unnaturally, unless in the context of a larger and stricter school of etiquette such as the court of Louis XIV in France. The meaning of the term RSVP was precise and encapsulated well before the word "RSVP" ever came into being. "Please Respond" is a common and well-understood expression for an invitation and RSVP is merely a shortcut and clever reference to specific school of French etiquette that used the phrase "respondez s'il vous plait." In contrast, VSRE encompasses both a new form of etiquette and a new acronym that doesn't reference anything special.
- jere 13y agoI suppose I meant new acronyms. It's certainly not impossible, as you have pointed out, but I don't have high hopes for people. Hell, most people can't understand how REPLY ALL works. On the other hand, if they were using an email client and it literally would not let them type a long response, that would be foolproof.
- the1 13y agoi usually end an email with a multiple choice question. that way, the receiver could just reply with the answer. did you like my comment? a) yes b) no
- artursapek 13y agoA
- mode80 13y agoWhen sending a VSR that might otherwise be rude, I just add "Sent from my iPhone" at the bottom. Don't tell anyone.
- carlsednaoui 13y agoVery clever
- archivator 13y agoThat'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.
- fudged71 13y agoIt gets suspicious if you write this and you don't have an iPhone ;)
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago"Sent from my Samsung" "Sent from my Windows Phone" "Sent from my $OEM" They all follow the same pattern these days.
- fudged71 13y agoHotmail syndrome. I'm going to change mine to say "Sent from Google Glass" just for kicks. "This message transcribed from an awkwardly public soundbite"
- reinhardt 13y agoI prefer "Sent from my rotary phone". No need for free advertisement or misplaced smugness about a disposable gizmo.
- Ives 13y agoI prefer "Sent from my phone". Why on earth would I advertise my particular brand of phone?
- andrewvc 13y agoAnnnnnnd this is why geeks have a reputation for social awkwardness.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoThis is not social awkwardness. This is social efficiency.
- lwat 13y agoYou say efficient, we say awkward.
- reinhardt 13y agoAwkward would be to just go ahead and start replying in one word without trying to establish a netiquette protocol.
- andrewvc 13y agoCommunication is about consensus. You can contend that you're right all day long, but so long as you put others off you'll be wrong.
- lowboy 13y agoHow is communication about consensus? You can put others off and still communicate "correctly".
- andrewflnr 13y agoProtocols are about consensus, almost by definition. In computer protocols, we get the consensus before we start using the protocol. In social interactions, we're molding the protocol as we use it. As for communicating "correctly", it's a matter of (mostly) definitions and circumstances whether putting people off and "correct" communication are consistent. You may have transmitted the correct information to someone's brain, but not annoying people is usually an important goal, sometimes even more important than that of transmitting the information. Maintaining someone's good opinion of you might outweigh the importance of whatever info you want to tell them.
- tmslnz 13y agoI 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.
- mizchief 13y agoDo you still beat your wife? -VSRE
- D-Coder 13y agoMu. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29)
- mizchief 13y agoDo you still beat your wife? -VSRE
- Wintamute 13y agoThe most viral/popular acronyms are easily pronounceable, I think. Acronyms like lol, rofl, afaik, imho etc. Not that you go around saying them all the time, but you can easily pronounce them in your own head so I think they tend to stick there and flow into your text easily. Maybe something along the lines of "sro" (short reply ok) would be better ...
- TylerE 13y agoI fail to see how "vis-ree" is any harder to pronounce thatn "roff-ull", "af-ack", or "em-ho"
- raldi 13y agoHow do you pronounce "RSVP"?
- Leszek 13y agoAresveepee, obviously. Rolls off the tongue.
- andrewflnr 13y agoViyesaro? I'm tempted to put an accent on the last "o"... Edit: um, viyesaree. Someone suggested VSRO elsewhere, for "very short reply OK" and I liked that a lot better, apparently.
- Mindless2112 13y ago"rizvup" according to a Charlie Brown cartoon -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLhfL1UZoM#t=432s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLhfL1UZoM#t=432s
- openmx 13y agoYou pronounce lol, rofl, afaik, imho? Talk about awkward.
- ycombobreaker 13y ago
- bsilvereagle 13y agoIf you could get some SEO happening for VSRE it would be very much appreciated. Hyperlinking to your post every time I want to use VSRE would be very time consuming.
- pbreit 13y agoIf it means "very short reply OK" why isn't it VSRO? "Expected" almost sounds too demanding to me...like you'll actually be disappointed if I write a little more.
- thatthatis 13y ago"Very short reply Welcome" VSRW was discussed elsewhere to make clear that it is an invitation but not an expectation.
- openmx 13y agoI like this too, I might start using it but with a text expander so others don't reply asking what the hell it means.
- openmx 13y ago+1 this sounds nicer.
- asveikau 13y agoOne 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.
- blantonl 13y agoI believe that Steve Jobs was one that practiced this when dealing with customers. And it seamed like his responses were always dead on target - whereas a PR team would launch into a long winded response to a customer, Steve summed it up in one sentence. That surely drove Apple's PR team crazy...
- gbog 13y agoThat's something I learnt the hard way: to customers, and internally between services, the less you write the best position you have.
- nemonoko 13y agoI've seen people who are great at short emails... but I've also seen a lot of miscommunication when people shoot fragments back and forth. It's a fine line between concise and useless.
- blantonl 13y agoIf a sales/business dev guy sent me a unsolicited message promoting their latest ad delivery platform or obscure SAAS solution, with VSRE at the end of his message - I would definitely view his approach in a better light. But, likely my response would still be: "No."
- d23 13y agoWhich, despite the "VSRE," would probably still come across as douchey. I don't think the op's idea would actually even work in practice, because the recipient still isn't communicating that what they are saying is polite. For all the sender knows, they could still be saying it gruffly. Smilies can accomplish what the author intended. "Can't, busy this week" Becomes "Can't, busy this week :(" If you don't mind looking like a wuss.
- rdl 13y agoI don't think politeness and length of message really correlate. "Can I marry your daughter?" "Sorry, no" or "Sorry, no, she's already married" isn't less polite inherently than a 30 page screed about how you would rather just give her a shotgun to kill herself instead of torturing her like that, etc. In fact, my shorter replies are usually my most polite. I think there is a point where it gets too short (single word answers, like some of pg's answers on hn, might be below the lower bound).
- mistercow 13y ago>"Can I marry your daughter?" "Sorry, no" or "Sorry, no, she's already married" isn't less polite inherently than a 30 page screed about how you would rather just give her a shotgun to kill herself instead of torturing her like that, etc. Counter-examples aren't a very good denial of correlation though. Sure, you can come up with examples of long replies and short replies where the longer reply is less polite, but that doesn't say anything about the general trend.
- FiloSottile 13y agoI'm going to use it, and I'd love to receive emails tagged as such. So, submitted to the Urban Dictionary!
- vectorpush 13y agoUntil this thread I honestly thought I was the only person who spends time agonizing over the wording of simple replies.
- rocky1138 13y agoThe only thing I'd change with this is 'E' to 'O' for OK. "Expected" is just a bit too pushy. What if I don't want to reply at all?
- nemonoko 13y agoI 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?
- batiudrami 13y agoInitially I wasn't a huge fan of the 'seen' status in Facebook messenger, but it's actually really useful when speaking with my good friends (who I know won't reply, but knowing they've seen it is all that's necessary). I just wish it was optional so that certain contacts won't necessarily know that I've seen their message.
- magoon 13y agoI sometimes end emails/IM questions with "Yes/No?"
- davefp 13y agoUnder what situation would a short reply not be acceptable? Seems to me that VSRE/VSRO telegraphs what should be known anyway. I don't like it.
- charlieok 13y agoHow about a friendly footer: “Short, one or two word replies are not only ok, they are much appreciated!”
- qeorge 13y agoI love this. I'm also extremely fond of EOM (short for End Of Message. An email with a short subject and no body). Often I send EOMs to imply a VSRE. For example, "Grill tonight? Have burgers. Off work @ 6. EOM" Very interested in learning others.
- sgpl 13y agoNNTR: '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.
- jessepollak 13y agoNNTR or NNRT?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jimbokun 13y agoUntil everyone starts communicating this way, and it becomes completely normal. Remember, a geek invented the smiley ( and I'm sure there are many other examples).
- qeorge 13y agoNNTR is great! Thank you!
- openmx 13y agoI see you enjoy neardoc/heredoc
- fsckin 13y agoNT: No text This one is shorter than the rest, and easy to grok. VSRE OR EOM? I'd have to look those up.
- argonaut 13y agoThere'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).
- cheese1756 13y agoAdd "Sent from my iPhone/Android Phone/etc" as the signature for all of your emails, not just your mobile ones. With it, a short reply is socially acceptable, and you are able to give brief answers.
- andyl 13y agoIn the early days of the telephone, there was some debate about the proper way to start and terminate a discussion. Many were fond of starting a discussion with 'ahoy', ending with 'that is all'. Alas, 'hello' and 'goodbye' won the competition. That is all.
- kamkazemoose 13y agoFun fact of the day, in the Simpsons Mr. Burns always answers the phone 'Ahoy-hoy,' which was Alexander Graham Bell's preferred greeting.
- jamesjporter 13y agoNow that I know this I am _very_ angry that 'ahoy' and 'that is all' didn't carry the day.
- thenonsequitur 13y agoNever mind what carried the day -- I'm adopting this protocol starting now, convention be damned!
- gideon_b 13y agoOr you could finish with "A simple yes or no is fine" and prevent the recipient from having to googling an acronym.
- edouard1234567 13y agoVSRE is implied in twitter or SMS simply because the length of the message is limited. Maybe we could introduce replies without bodies for emails? RWB? also know for "Royal Winnipeg Ballet"
- EzGraphs 13y agoAnd in reply MVCE (Many Verbose Comments Expected).
- skybrian 13y agoI think you're jumping ahead; it can't be an acronym before people even start using it. Maybe write "Short reply OK" for now.
- gorloth 13y agopersonally I find "short reply OK" to be preferably. It comes across as less harsh, it tells the other party that you are ok with removing the random fluff if they want to. VSRE is a demand that all the fluff be removed
- sliverstorm 13y agoICTBA. (That's my new acronym for "It can totally be an acronym")
- pelian 13y agoIn China most people never went through the whole e-mail era and practically jumped right into mobile. QQ is the defacto communication channel and Wechat 微信 is quickly replacing QQ as the method of choice today. The point is, e-mail was intended to mimic letter writing, so "short" wasn't the point. Chat messaging and short voice messaging protocols via mobile devices and their clunky keyboards were, so why not adopt a new communication method instead of a new acronym no one knows?
- kyro 13y agoI 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.
- andrewljohnson 13y agoMany 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.
- tempestn 13y agoNote that he's not suggesting adding an acronym to his replies. He's suggesting adding VSRE to emails you send to someone if you expect they may be busy, and you only require a short reply. If they have time and feel like writing you a long reply anyway, no harm done, but if they recognize the acronym, they can go ahead and send you a quick note. I already do something like this regularly, but since there's no existing shorthand, it generally means adding something like, "I'm sure you must be busy, so if you literally want to just send a one or two word reply, that's no problem! Cheers." If there were a universally-known way to say that in 4 characters, it would make things a bit easier when both parties are busy. That said, you could also just use a macro to add the above to an email. The closest parallel to the OP's suggestion that comes to mind is adding (nt) to the subject line of an email if there is no text, saving the reader the time of opening the body of the email. (Although this is made obsolete by most modern email programs, which show previews.)
- davidp 13y agoI 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.
- KamiCrit 13y agoOk.
- y0z 13y agoAnother initiative along a similar vein that I tried for a while is called 5Sentences: http://five.sentenc.es/ http://five.sentenc.es/ I have tried to adopt the principle now, without including it in my footers. In the environment that I'm in something like this would be great if everyone could adopt it - very few would in reality.
- seivan 13y agoI'm a fan! I'll be using this.
- bpatrianakos 13y agoHow 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.
- danbruc 13y agoWe 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. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5586653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5586653
- duncanwilcox 13y agoVery Long HN Thread Expected to discuss VSRE to death.
- shurcooL 13y agoThis is awesome, thanks for the suggestion, I can see myself using this quite often. If I don't need more than a VSR, now I can indicate that to the person.
- fjpoblam 13y agoVSRE 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.
- bwilkins 13y agoHow about VSRP - Very Short Reply Preferred?
- starbork 13y agoChrist, what an asshole.
- anantzoid 13y agoI guess VSRE is a very appropriate method to skip the social formalities and discomforting feeling it brings along with it. Some people (like me) like to keep it brief and to the point, rather than pulling strings of over-politeness. It doesn't mean we are rude or something, its just that we are comfortable with this way of interaction at work place.
- phryk 13y agoIMHO "Very Short Reply Expected" makes it sound like an answer longer than ~5 words is not welcome. I think it ought to be more inclusive so that in case there is more to say you still feel welcome to do so. Maybe something like SRW for "Short response welcome"…?
- JohnLBevan 13y agoShould there be an RSVW (welcome) as well as an RWVE (expected)? i.e. RSVE I'd interpret as "I don't have time to read long replies" whilst RSVW I'd read as "I'm happy for your response to be brief, but if you prefer verbose knock yourself out".
- maffydub 13y agoAt work, where everyone uses Outlook, I often just set up a "poll" for this (even for only 1 recipient - it's only a couple of clicks). It does rely on me being able to guess what their answer will be, but for things like "Please confirm you'll meet deadline X", it's fine. Obviously, this doesn't work in non-homogeneous environments.
- awkward_silence 13y agoWhile 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.
- mgav 13y agoMy circle uses NNTOOR in the subject line, plus the text being communicated (No Need To Open the email Or Respond (everything's in the subject line). It's awesome to zip through 10 NNTOOR emails in one minute!
- mryzyn505 13y agoI like VSRE for composition as well as response efficiency. Many email guides recommend short emails. But it can take more time to craft a pithy missive than a longer explanatory FYI note with a question at the end that needs responding to. I'm not suggesting that we don't take care in writing emails, but no one wants to spend all day editing emails to some arbitrary standard of brevity anymore than they do answering them. VSRE. Brilliant convention.
- wojt_eu 13y agook
- cemdev 13y agoI just VSRE anyways.
- JamesQuilt 13y agoAre you a retard?