"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"
If 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.
Because 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.
Because, 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.
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.
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").
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!"
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?"
Make 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.
I came to the comments hoping this would be here. "Expected", well, seems to place an additional expectation on the recipient, whereas "Welcome" merely invites an additional option.
Abbreviation needed? Phrase the question such that a curt response is encouraged. A la, "Herbert: we're meeting tomorrow at 2 in my office to discuss the new release of jquery. Be there?" (The question tends to elicit a "Yes" or "No")
Aha! I've been trying to introduce people to the abbreviation "NRN - No Reply Needed" for text messages. It seems such a waste for someone to just text back with a reply of "ok" and pay 25c or whatever for the privilege when you don't really need to know they received it. These 3 characters at the end of a message could save a great deal over time.
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.
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
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?"
Why 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.
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 :(.
Jabber (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.
> 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.
I 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.)
Why do you want to hide that you red the message ?
Is it when you would like to ignore the sender but are too curious and would like to know what message he sent you ?
Exactly. Facebook knows that, and I imagine that's why they implemented this "receiver has read the message" as a way to pressure everyone to keep replying right away.
"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.
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?
Could 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?"
No, 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.
I 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.
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.
Hotmail syndrome. I'm going to change mine to say "Sent from Google Glass" just for kicks. "This message transcribed from an awkwardly public soundbite"
Protocols 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.
You can't communicate effectively without a protocol/language/etc, but communicating is not about consensus; it's about communicating ideas/thoughts/etc. Consensus is a part of communication, not its aim.
I agree that not offending/annoying someone is beneficial and might outweigh the message you have to communicate, but that isn't relevant to discussion about the efficiency of the protocol. If in spite of brusqueness, your point comes across, then it's effective communication.
Think of the "consensus" as the embedded state within a communication.
In a feudal society a lord might send a written missive to the King or Queen, and if they did it would contain a ton of horribly polite boilerplate, because the consensus of the time on both sides was that anything less was disrespectful.
It is very possible that your lack of words in a given communication sends a point across that you never intended, even if the point you had in mind also made it across.
In computer protocols, we get the consensus before we start using the protocol.
VSRP analogue in computing: Unannounced, start omitting headers in response to HTTP requests. They are unnecessary baggage that gets in the way of the actual content of the message.
Not quite. If you're using VSRE, the information contained in those headers is already implicit. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are protocols where you don't need to send loquacious headers or equivalent with every response. "VSRE" says, "go ahead and assume I know what the headers would be and skip them". If you're not expecting headers, it's not a problem if they're missing.
No, you've got it all wrong! Geeks aren't socially awkward, they're socially "efficient"
Social conventions aren't established by protocol drafts, they're organic.
Also, people write long replies for a reason. Wording indicates emotional state. If you have trouble reading emotional state, you don't care. If, like most people, you do care, then this proposal is ridiculous.
An example:
"How about we schedule lunch next week? VSRP"
VSRP: "Can't make it, extremely busy. Maybe next month?"
FULL: "Sorry to say, I can't make it. I'd really like to but we're in a crunch right now, and I've got a booked calendar. Perhaps next month when things have died down? I'd really like to catch up but this month is already overwhelming"
I might take the VSRP as a bit of an affront. The full explanation however is quite understandable.
In this case I don't think that these reasons apply. Introducing a VSRE on the initiator side, or a Short Response, Not An Asshole on the responding side would be a worthwhile change with a manageable side effect.
Don't fix it if it ain't broke seems to run counter to innovation. I'd try for improvement on a functional system if there's a positive expected outcome.
If we're really going for brevity above all else, then I think it can be taken for granted that the answer's 'no' if we suggest moving the month—so the 'no' can be dropped, too. (Alternatively, interpreting the reply as "Yes, how about next month?" seems to work perfectly well, though it's unusual.)
No one is required to use it and even when you receive a mail tagged VSRE, you may still decide to write a long reply if you can not communicate your messag in a few words.
The obvious use case is you are communicating with someone for the first time or for not so long, you are fine with a short reply and you know that recipient would like to write a short reply but will not do so in order not to sound impolite.
I think there's time and place for both VSRs and long responses.
> Social conventions aren't established by protocol drafts, they're organic.
Organic stuff lends itself better to optimization - by constant feedback.
I often have to write FULL responses like the example you provided and find this incredibly annoying. There are many reasons to that. Sometimes, I just don't have time to craft a nice sounding and formatted answer at the moment (if I'm going FULL, I won't tolerate any spelling mistakes, typos, double spaces, etc. If one commits oneself to quality, it should be 100%).
But sometimes, the crafting of the answer FULL requires too much cognitive power. Quite often in situations similar to your example, my real reaction is a linear combination of things like "I'm not sure if I have time", "I wanted to go to a party on friday", "I'm worried what my girlfriend will think of this", "I really need some rest", "I'm worried we won't have much to talk about and it will feel awkward", "I'd really like to save this money for 3D printer electronics", "goddammit, I'll break my ketosis again if I'll eat a normal lunch with you", etc. It takes a bit of effort to craft a message that is a) nice, b) not an outright lie. A bit of effort I don't always want to make at the very moment.
So yes, I'm all-in for any kind of social protocol that would allow me to decline/postpone requests without having to explain myself to other party just for the message to sound polite.
So, this is an attempt to add something organically. It's optional. If you would find a VSR an affront, don't say VSRE. The whole point is a declaration that the sender won't find it an affront. It says you don't need the emotional state transmitted like that.
Personally, I find the latter response just disrespectful of my time. If all you want/need to say is you can't make it, don't write a bloody novel! All I need is an answer.
There's a time and place for long communication and it's in person. Not in an email.
Four sentences constitutes a "novel" now? What is going on in the world that people dont have the time, or worse seem not to care, to communicate in a normal way?
People are more important than "your time", and a failure to realize that is a dehumanization of the other party. The latter response demonstrates emotional sensitivity towards the other person in the conversation. Among most people, that is important. It makes the other party feel good. It reinforces that you do care about the other party enough to ensure that they are not potentially affronted by terse communication. This is why normal people, lacking in the self-absorption your post exudes, do this sort of thing.
And in any case it doesn't take more than a few seconds to write or read; when the hell did four sentences become a "bloody novel"?
I think two key parts of what you said are "most people" and "normal people". This normativity is taken for granted here. Preference for terse messages is ultimately a matter of taste and I've yet to see evidence that one belongs to a clear majority.
It may not be a clear majority of people, but it's pretty obviously a majority of people who set expectations in public discourse. That's why it's normative.
Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse.
"potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me.
More interestingly, the only people I've ever seen write email like in that example are people who send/receive less than about 5 emails a day. The more they have to process daily, the shorter their messages become.
> Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse.
In written contexts, there often isn't. Without what I would call a significant amount of personal history, there isn't enough data and there aren't nonverbal cues to demonstrate terseness versus rudeness. Many people will assume rudeness, because that's what that pattern generally looks like.
Also, there's the nerd stereotype of being a standoffish jerk to consider, which you are doing a bang-up job of reinforcing with crap like this:
> "potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me.
This is the sort of thing I would expect a teenager in the throes of self-absorption to say. I say this because I did. Then I grew up.
You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop.
> "You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop."
Not at all. I've noticed a general uptick in happiness since I started taking people at face value and stopped worrying about walking on egg shells for no reason whatsoever.
You know what you get by trying too hard to be polite and making absolutely certain no feelings could possibly get hurt? The language bureaucrats use to say "Your tax basis this year is X" on two A4 pages.
I hate it when people beat around the bush. So I avoid doing it.
And I'd find anyone that wrote "VSRE" to be very disrespectful. And since I'm a bit hot headed I'd probably write a big long response, just out of spite. :-)
My understanding was that the whole point of VSRE is to be respectful of your time. The idea is simply to let you know that there's no need to write them a long reply if you don't have the time. You're still welcome to do so if you wish. How is that disrespectful?
Perhaps the acronym should've been something like VSRA (Accepted), or SROK (Short Reply OK) instead.
Declaring yourself to be operating by "Crocker's Rules" means that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you. Crocker's Rules means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind - if you're offended, it's your fault. Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong, or they think they have to dance around it.) Two people using Crocker's Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting. Obviously, don't declare yourself to be operating by Crocker's Rules unless you have that kind of mental discipline.
Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you. Crocker's Rules are a discipline, not a privilege. Furthermore, taking advantage of Crocker's Rules does not imply reciprocity. How could it? Crocker's Rules are something you do for yourself, to maximize information received - not something you grit your teeth over and do as a favor.
"Crocker's Rules" are named after Lee Daniel Crocker.
It is quite confusing that the "rules" do not seem to be set out explicitly as a list of rules, but that as those two paragraphs which seems to be written about rules (in plural) written elsewhere.
Would a better name be "Crocker's approach" or "Crocker's style"?
Because if you take the trouble to write that out, there will still be slightly more pressure on the receiver to reciprocate by giving a more formal reply, despite the surface content.
I think "how hard is it?" is the wrong question. We should be asking "how can this be better?". It doesn't take very long to type something like "as far as I know", but we still routinely use acronyms like AFAIK, because as long as everyone knows what it means, it's often a waste of time to type the full thing out. The only difference here is that VSRE is not already a custom.
AFAIK, IMHO, INAL, etc. work because they are acronyms for very common phrases. Intelligent people can reason out their meaning based on context without you having to spell them out. That's why they are popular and why they work. There was never a global memo "Hey everybody we're going to start using AFAIK now."
VSRE doesn't work. It's better to just type out what you want to say in this case.
You just say "VSRE doesn't work" without mentioning that the only reason is that people don't already say it. That's my point. Maybe we can agree that we shouldn't jump straight to the acronym. But if we want this kind of custom, and I do, it has to start somewhere, not with a global memo but with people just doing it. I'm just going to start saying "short reply ok". With any luck that will catch on, and then we can abbreviate to "SRO" or whatever people wind up using, and the world will be an ever so slightly more efficient place.
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.
It's more about effective communication than power games. Brevity is natural when you have to communicate with lots of people via email and your main priority is getting shit done. What's funny is that for random/cold emails, i'm far more likely to reply if I can respond in a line or two without being rude.
That's a great point. While I can't see this catching on in the wider world, it could certainly be used in a small team, say at a startup. In fact, I think I'm going to pass it on to the other two devs on my team right now!
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.
The 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 ...
If 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.
If 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.
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 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.
I'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.
If 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.
Which, 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.
I 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).
>"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.
231 comments
[ 50.2 ms ] story [ 2475 ms ] threadnow just waiting for those downvotes...
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.
I wonder if we could also request a RAQE without being rude.. (response to all questions expected). My pet email hate.
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"
B) It's one of those ideas that combines a very common problem with a very simple solution.
Different suggestions from the comments.
That got forked quickly. And we need a standardization committee. Or maybe a poll will do.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.
I wonder if putting 'reply generated by short responder' at the end would make it socially acceptable
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...
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.
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 :(.
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.
- You can't read them without announcing that you did. - FB parses and might even censor you message if it contains blacklisted domains.
(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.)
I don't know about the site itself, I really only interact via my phone.
It's been around long enough now that you probably don't have to worry about it going away anytime soon, and its users really like it.
(I am not affiliated)
http://shortmail.com/
Strictly: Très courte réponse attendue. My preferred: Tout courte réponse attendue.
So maybe TCRA instead of VSRA...?
Seriously though, I'd rather have this built into an email system than relying on people to start understanding and following acronyms.
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.
did you like my comment?
a) yes
b) no
"Sent from my Windows Phone"
"Sent from my $OEM"
They all follow the same pattern these days.
(I know it's a rotary phone. But it existed pre-emoji so renders most anywhere, where U+1F4F1 [📱] doesn't.)
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.
I agree that not offending/annoying someone is beneficial and might outweigh the message you have to communicate, but that isn't relevant to discussion about the efficiency of the protocol. If in spite of brusqueness, your point comes across, then it's effective communication.
In a feudal society a lord might send a written missive to the King or Queen, and if they did it would contain a ton of horribly polite boilerplate, because the consensus of the time on both sides was that anything less was disrespectful.
It is very possible that your lack of words in a given communication sends a point across that you never intended, even if the point you had in mind also made it across.
VSRP analogue in computing: Unannounced, start omitting headers in response to HTTP requests. They are unnecessary baggage that gets in the way of the actual content of the message.
X-ACCEPT-NO-HEADERS: true
or something in your request, which allows the responding party to omit headers in the reply (or not).
Think about that carefully.
Social conventions aren't established by protocol drafts, they're organic.
Also, people write long replies for a reason. Wording indicates emotional state. If you have trouble reading emotional state, you don't care. If, like most people, you do care, then this proposal is ridiculous.
An example:
"How about we schedule lunch next week? VSRP"
VSRP: "Can't make it, extremely busy. Maybe next month?"
FULL: "Sorry to say, I can't make it. I'd really like to but we're in a crunch right now, and I've got a booked calendar. Perhaps next month when things have died down? I'd really like to catch up but this month is already overwhelming"
I might take the VSRP as a bit of an affront. The full explanation however is quite understandable.
1) Because it isn't always worth the cost
2) Because we don't always fully understand the systems we are modifying
Which hearkens back to, "Don't fix it if it ain't broke". Inefficient is not automatically broke.
Don't fix it if it ain't broke seems to run counter to innovation. I'd try for improvement on a functional system if there's a positive expected outcome.
Heh. Forget IANAL; we need IANAA.
"Can't. Next month?"
"No. Next month?"
No ++month?
:)
The obvious use case is you are communicating with someone for the first time or for not so long, you are fine with a short reply and you know that recipient would like to write a short reply but will not do so in order not to sound impolite.
> Social conventions aren't established by protocol drafts, they're organic.
Organic stuff lends itself better to optimization - by constant feedback.
I often have to write FULL responses like the example you provided and find this incredibly annoying. There are many reasons to that. Sometimes, I just don't have time to craft a nice sounding and formatted answer at the moment (if I'm going FULL, I won't tolerate any spelling mistakes, typos, double spaces, etc. If one commits oneself to quality, it should be 100%).
But sometimes, the crafting of the answer FULL requires too much cognitive power. Quite often in situations similar to your example, my real reaction is a linear combination of things like "I'm not sure if I have time", "I wanted to go to a party on friday", "I'm worried what my girlfriend will think of this", "I really need some rest", "I'm worried we won't have much to talk about and it will feel awkward", "I'd really like to save this money for 3D printer electronics", "goddammit, I'll break my ketosis again if I'll eat a normal lunch with you", etc. It takes a bit of effort to craft a message that is a) nice, b) not an outright lie. A bit of effort I don't always want to make at the very moment.
So yes, I'm all-in for any kind of social protocol that would allow me to decline/postpone requests without having to explain myself to other party just for the message to sound polite.
There's a time and place for long communication and it's in person. Not in an email.
People are more important than "your time", and a failure to realize that is a dehumanization of the other party. The latter response demonstrates emotional sensitivity towards the other person in the conversation. Among most people, that is important. It makes the other party feel good. It reinforces that you do care about the other party enough to ensure that they are not potentially affronted by terse communication. This is why normal people, lacking in the self-absorption your post exudes, do this sort of thing.
And in any case it doesn't take more than a few seconds to write or read; when the hell did four sentences become a "bloody novel"?
Welcome to the generation of twitter. :)
"potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me.
More interestingly, the only people I've ever seen write email like in that example are people who send/receive less than about 5 emails a day. The more they have to process daily, the shorter their messages become.
In written contexts, there often isn't. Without what I would call a significant amount of personal history, there isn't enough data and there aren't nonverbal cues to demonstrate terseness versus rudeness. Many people will assume rudeness, because that's what that pattern generally looks like.
Also, there's the nerd stereotype of being a standoffish jerk to consider, which you are doing a bang-up job of reinforcing with crap like this:
> "potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me.
This is the sort of thing I would expect a teenager in the throes of self-absorption to say. I say this because I did. Then I grew up.
You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop.
Not at all. I've noticed a general uptick in happiness since I started taking people at face value and stopped worrying about walking on egg shells for no reason whatsoever.
You know what you get by trying too hard to be polite and making absolutely certain no feelings could possibly get hurt? The language bureaucrats use to say "Your tax basis this year is X" on two A4 pages.
I hate it when people beat around the bush. So I avoid doing it.
Perhaps the acronym should've been something like VSRA (Accepted), or SROK (Short Reply OK) instead.
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crocker%27s_rules
I wish this concept was more widely known though.
EDIT: original description (http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html) is dead but I found it's contents in cache, so I'm quoting it below:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
Declaring yourself to be operating by "Crocker's Rules" means that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you. Crocker's Rules means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind - if you're offended, it's your fault. Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong, or they think they have to dance around it.) Two people using Crocker's Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting. Obviously, don't declare yourself to be operating by Crocker's Rules unless you have that kind of mental discipline.
Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you. Crocker's Rules are a discipline, not a privilege. Furthermore, taking advantage of Crocker's Rules does not imply reciprocity. How could it? Crocker's Rules are something you do for yourself, to maximize information received - not something you grit your teeth over and do as a favor.
"Crocker's Rules" are named after Lee Daniel Crocker.
Would a better name be "Crocker's approach" or "Crocker's style"?
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.
I think "how hard is it?" is the wrong question. We should be asking "how can this be better?". It doesn't take very long to type something like "as far as I know", but we still routinely use acronyms like AFAIK, because as long as everyone knows what it means, it's often a waste of time to type the full thing out. The only difference here is that VSRE is not already a custom.
VSRE doesn't work. It's better to just type out what you want to say in this case.
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.
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.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29)
Edit: um, viyesaree. Someone suggested VSRO elsewhere, for "very short reply OK" and I liked that a lot better, apparently.
I never say AFAIK aloud, but I do always pronounce it "a fake" in my head when typing.
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.
That surely drove Apple's PR team crazy...
But, likely my response would still be: "No."
Smilies can accomplish what the author intended.
Becomes If you don't mind looking like a wuss."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).
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.
So, submitted to the Urban Dictionary!