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We now automatically remove salutations from posts as they are entered.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of …

^                 # begins at start of body
\s*               # possible spaces
(
hii?(?![a-z])|    # any of these greeting words
hello|
hey(?![a-z])|
dear|
greetings|
hai|
guys|
howdy|
h(i|e)ya|
hola
)
.*?               # followed by anything, up to...
(
[.,;!-]+          # one or more bits of punctuation
\s*               # possible spaces
|
(\r?\n)+          # one or more newlines
)

… is removed automatically at the time of submission to the server.

The thanks parts at the end of posts are much more difficult / risky to detect, so we are not touching those for now.

Some stats based on a local copy of the Stack Overflow database: questions starting with …

• hi 300,455
• hello 107,646
• hey 22,697
• dear 3,998
• greetings 1,978
• hai 964
• guys 921
• hii 512
• howdy 483
• hiya 344
• hay 296
• heya 207
• hola 56
• hihi 6
• salutations 5

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.

We now automatically remove salutations from posts as they are entered.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of …

^                 # begins at start of body
\s*               # possible spaces
(
hii?(?![a-z])|    # any of these greeting words
hello|
hey(?![a-z])|
dear|
greetings|
hai|
guys|
howdy|
h(i|e)ya|
hola
)
.*?               # followed by anything, up to...
(
[.,;!-]+          # one or more bits of punctuation
\s*               # possible spaces
|
(\r?\n)+          # one or more newlines
)

… is removed automagically at the time of submission to the server.

The thanks parts at the end of posts are much more difficult / risky to detect, so we are not touching those for now.

Some stats based on a local copy of the Stack Overflow database: questions starting with …

• hi 300,455
• hello 107,646
• hey 22,697
• dear 3,998
• greetings 1,978
• hai 964
• guys 921
• hii 512
• howdy 483
• hiya 344
• hay 296
• heya 207
• hola 56
• hihi 6
• salutations 5

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.

We now automatically remove salutations from posts as they are entered.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of …

^                 # begins at start of body
\s*               # possible spaces
(
hii?(?![a-z])|    # any of these greeting words
hello|
hey(?![a-z])|
dear|
greetings|
hai|
guys|
howdy|
h(i|e)ya|
hola
)
.*?               # followed by anything, up to...
(
[.,;!-]+          # one or more bits of punctuation
\s*               # possible spaces
|
(\r?\n)+          # one or more newlines
)

… is removed automagically at the time of submission to the server.

The thanks parts at the end of posts are much more difficult / risky to detect, so we are not touching those for now.

Some stats based on a local copy of the Stack Overflow database: questions starting with …

• hi 300,455
• hello 107,646
• hey 22,697
• dear 3,998
• greetings 1,978
• hai 964
• guys 921
• hii 512
• howdy 483
• hiya 344
• hay 296
• heya 207
• hola 56
• hihi 6
• salutations 5

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.

We now automatically remove salutations from posts as they are entered.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of …

^                 # begins at start of body
\s*               # possible spaces
(
hii?(?![a-z])|    # any of these greeting words
hello|
hey(?![a-z])|
dear|
greetings|
hai|
guys|
howdy|
h(i|e)ya|
hola
)
.*?               # followed by anything, up to...
(
[.,;!-]+          # one or more bits of punctuation
\s*               # possible spaces
|
(\r?\n)+          # one or more newlines
)

… is removed automatically at the time of submission to the server.

The thanks parts at the end of posts are much more difficult / risky to detect, so we are not touching those for now.

Some stats based on a local copy of the Stack Overflow database: questions starting with …

• hi 300,455
• hello 107,646
• hey 22,697
• dear 3,998
• greetings 1,978
• hai 964
• guys 921
• hii 512
• howdy 483
• hiya 344
• hay 296
• heya 207
• hola 56
• hihi 6
• salutations 5

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.

We now automatically remove salutations from posts as they are entered.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of …

^                 # begins at start of body
\s*               # possible spaces
(
hii?(?![a-z])|    # any of these greeting words
hello|
h(e|a)y(?![a-z])|
dear|
greetings|
hai|
guys|
howdy|
h(i|e)ya|
hola
)
.*?               # followed by anything, up to...
(
[.,;!-]+          # one or more bits of punctuation
\s*               # possible spaces
|
(\r?\n)+          # one or more newlines
)

… is removed automagically at the time of submission to the server.

The thanks parts at the end of posts are much more difficult / risky to detect, so we are not touching those for now.

Some stats based on a local copy of the Stack Overflow database: questions starting with …

• hi 300,455
• hello 107,646
• hey 22,697
• dear 3,998
• greetings 1,978
• hai 964
• guys 921
• hii 512
• howdy 483
• hiya 344
• hay 296
• heya 207
• hola 56
• hihi 6
• salutations 5

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.

We now automatically remove salutations from posts as they are entered.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of …

^                 # begins at start of body
\s*               # possible spaces
(
hii?(?![a-z])|    # any of these greeting words
hello|
hey(?![a-z])|
dear|
greetings|
hai|
guys|
howdy|
h(i|e)ya|
hola
)
.*?               # followed by anything, up to...
(
[.,;!-]+          # one or more bits of punctuation
\s*               # possible spaces
|
(\r?\n)+          # one or more newlines
)

… is removed automagically at the time of submission to the server.

The thanks parts at the end of posts are much more difficult / risky to detect, so we are not touching those for now.

Some stats based on a local copy of the Stack Overflow database: questions starting with …

• hi 300,455
• hello 107,646
• hey 22,697
• dear 3,998
• greetings 1,978
• hai 964
• guys 921
• hii 512
• howdy 483
• hiya 344
• hay 296
• heya 207
• hola 56
• hihi 6
• salutations 5

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.