Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3088201-20140123022032/@comment-8-20140123174558

There's another side to this. I've seen chats where everybody is careful to say hello and goodbye to every person joining and leaving... every single time. And that's basically what the whole chat becomes about. Especially when someone is leaving and joining a lot (maybe even doing so because of a technical problem) and everyone still says hello and goodbye each time.

There's a balance here, as in most things. But here's my view on the etiquette for greetings in chat:

If you are looking at the chat (and as Stardust said, many times people may not be) and someone joins, then it's nice for one or more people to say hi. If they have been in and out a lot, then you are okay to skip that and assume they didn't really leave as such, just stepped away for a moment.

It's not necessary for the person joining to reply to each greeting - a general "hello" to the chat is enough. If they said hello on joining, then they can assume anyone saying hello back is replying to their initial greeting. No need for another reply back! And it's not necessary for everyone in the chat to say hello, just a few (or even one) reply can speak for the whole chat.

If the person joining doesn't say anything, it's okay not to greet them. Maybe they want to just lurk and not get involved yet. But it's also okay to go ahead and say hi. If they don't reply you can just assume they are busy or want to be quiet - it's not a matter to take offense over

If someone is leaving, then again it's nice for a couple of people to say bye, but not necessary for everyone to do so - again, think of it as those first people speaking for the whole chat :)

For least interruption of the chat, I tend to feel the most polite thing to do is to say bye and then leave without waiting for replies. That way, you are not waiting expectantly for replies, others don't feel obligated to break off what they are doing to reply, and you never get that awkward pause if people are totally distracted at the time you are leaving. It's also okay to wait a bit to see if anyone has something else to say, just remember that no reply doesn't mean people don't care, it just means they didn't reply for some unknown reason

I'd also remember that there are people from many cultures and of many ages on chat. What is rude to one, may be polite to another - and vice versa. Personally, I dislike being called ma'am on chat, I know the intention is to be polite, but to me as an English person it seems over formal and less polite than just "sannse". But all I do is ask people to call me by my name, and ignore it if they insist on not doing so

But the most important part is, I would encourage everyone not to assume that any lack of greeting is intended to offend. No one is trying to upset you, or to slight you, we are all just a varied bunch of people who enjoy hanging out in a chat together - even if we don't say it very often :)