How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

[Ben Scott]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Lori Nagel <jastiv at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> For no particular reason, I will mention that I think that this is a
>> really good document.
>>
>>  http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>
> For no particular reason, I will say I do not think very highly of that document.

  For several particular reasons, I will say that document makes some
very good points.

  Some are matters of simple politeness (something which is also often
lacking).  But most of it is about simply getting good results when
asking for help.  Asking smart questions will yield better results for
those doing the asking.

  Some particular reasons (some of these issues are less applicable to
this group, but I encounter them commonly elsewhere):

  "clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language" -- absolutely.
There have been plenty of times where those trying to help have been
unable to do so simply because the person asking for help couldn't be
understood.

  "Be precise and informative about your problem".   Again, very
applicable.  Sometimes questions don't even mention what product
someone is using!  All we get told is "It doesn't work".  What, are we
supposed to be psychic?  I can't count the number of times where I've
had to ask what OS and release, what product and release, what the
person was trying to do, what went wrong, etc., etc.  It's like
pulling teeth.

  Including detail on what one has tried, and in what order, can also
make all the difference in the world.  Computers thrive on precision;
you need to work that way to fix them.

  "Describe the goal, not the step" is something that everyone should
do everywhere, all the time, not just for computers.  Understanding
the goal is *HUGE*.  Failure to do so often ends up solving the wrong
problem.  I go through this all the time at work.  When people say "I
can't do X", my first question is often, "What are you trying to do?"
Sometimes the answer will be something completely different but much,
much better.

  I've very often also found that while framing up a question in a
"smart" fashion, I'll realize what I haven't done but should, or that
I don't understand the situation as well as I should.  In the process
of then filling in those gaps, I find the problem and get things
working that much faster.

  There's good wisdom in asking smart questions.

-- Ben