How to ask a question.

[cave dave]

I stumbled upon this and I thought it should be required reading for CPF's.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Note: The authors are not a help desk for your project.

Just some of the good stuff on this document:

Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or on a website chat board, do the following:

1. Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum you plan to post to.
2. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
3. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
4. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
5. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
6. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
7. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.

:twothumbs

 

[Kiessling]

Gotta agree on this one :thumbsup:

And ... for Darell, I gotta add:

8. Add a links to the stuff you're talking about.

bernie

 

[Mike Painter]

Doesn't work.
I've spent hours and sometimes days doing all those things wioth some coding problem. Nothing.
Then I post.
30 seconds after hitting submit, the answer pops into my head. Ther have been very, very few exceptions to this.

Any way, number one should be to feed the brownies their milk and cookies first.

 

[tjdean01]

People have the same problem on every forum, including the one I moderate. People who have been around for a long time are bitter towards newbies who haven't paid their dues and sometimes forget that not only are they not the site owners, but they actively make the choice spend time on any forum which allows newbies to register. The site owners are usually looking for more members, and telling the the new question askers to take a hike hardly generates new interest in the topic at hand. There will always be people want others not as educated in the topic to get off the forum. And they will always lose the battle.

 

[SemperFi]

The skill and aptitude in displaying not only prudence, courtesy and patience when dealing even an all too common query by an obviously newbie, is to take it to task with one's own integrity... which is, the articulate response to generate consideration and welcome with an adequate answer that enlightens if not, encourage, motivation and recap for inspiration to return and to delve further.

Approaching the right way, for that's part education too... thanks to the sensible, calculated reply by the "senior & experience" veteran of the Forum willing to lend a hand with answers.

My observation to the exchanges on both sides addressing any issues, and it may be the 100th, well so be it. If any country and its leaders are to uphold an indifferent attitude, would you even consider voting them to run your country? They too are fellow humans and they too want to understand in not hurting the feelings of the opposite.

By observing and hoping to see leadership with the right stature and answer to their doubts, however foolish it may sound, are you as smart in giving the answer or show stupidity in failing to hide your own lack of composure and with no understandable answers as a result, which is worser?

Cheers and this topic is heading in that right direction, if I may so add, a thumbs up for Dave...:twothumbs

 

[geek4christ]

Ah, a link to the famous ESR's website. That's the kind of stuff that occupied my time in college (before flashlights). I give you 2 points for finding that, cave dave, and another 2 for posting it to CPF.

This is one of my favorite sections. It's slightly inconvenient to see threads titled "Check this out..." or "What about this..." because you don't know whether you're interested or not until you have visited the thread and sucked down a little extra bandwidth from the server.

Of course, this is a forum and we all make allowances for that sort of thing. I've certainly benefited from the kindness of others overlooking my newbishness, but the things in that write-up are great to keep in mind.

 

[Edjusted]

I think you could condense pretty much all of those to:

Don't be lazy!


Spend a few minutes and do your own research. Who knows, you might even learn something.

However, I do enjoy some of these posts, because nothing beats the classic response:

Try http://www.google.com

 

[TedTheLed]

hey what do you know? (that's rhetorical) I tried google and sure enough

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=how+to+answer+a+question

...one of my favorite guides to answering a question is "if you can't explain it so that a seven year old can understand, then you don't know what you're talking about ! ..."