Meta Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for meta-discussion of the Stack Exchange family of Q&A websites. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I just began an answer with
Ha, I just ran into this myself!
but it would come out as
I just ran into this myself!
and an edit would not help.
Now I see how that beginning of an answer is not strictly adding to its content value, but it seems like it does not hurt and – especially with regard to the recent push for more friendliness on SE – make the user experience a bit more … natural. Maybe the software is a bit too eager with manual editing of posts?
You seem already to have provided evidence that "Ha, " is being removed.
I don't know what came next in your answer but I would always prefer to see an answer begin with:
<start of answer meat>
rather than:
Ha, I just ran into this myself!
<start of answer meat>
To me "Ha, " is definitely chit chat, and all of "Ha, I just ran into this myself!" may be too.
When I visit an answer, the sooner the answerer starts providing the meat of the answer, the sooner I can decide whether the answer provided will answer the question that I came looking for an answer to. I assume that an answerer will usually be familiar with the issue of a question that they are answering, so learning that that had run into it recently will normally add little.
ha, andhais not a greeting or salutation, I’d say.