How to ask questions the smart way.

  • Two Factor Authentication is now available on BeyondUnreal Forums. To configure it, visit your Profile and look for the "Two Step Verification" option on the left side. We can send codes via email (may be slower) or you can set up any TOTP Authenticator app on your phone (Authy, Google Authenticator, etc) to deliver codes. It is highly recommended that you configure this to keep your account safe.

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Its a little lunix orientated, but a lot of the points still remain. This is copied from Smoothwall documentation, and is available elsewhere on the internet.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
by Eric S. Raymond
Author of ‘Cathedral and the Bazaar’

Introduction

In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way that is likely to get you a satisfactory answer.

The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, "Good question!" is a strong and sincere compliment.

Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance(Probably explains me...). It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.

What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks -- they take without giving back, they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this "losers" (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it "lusers").

We realise that there are many people who just want to use the software we write, and have no interest in learning technical details. For most people, a computer is merely a tool, a means to an end; they have more important things to do and lives to live. We acknowledge that, and don't expect everyone to take an interest in the technical matters that fascinate us. Nevertheless, our style of answering questions is tuned for people who do take such an interest and are willing to be active participants in problem-solving. That's not going to change. Nor should it; if it did, we would become less effective at the things we do best.

We're (largely) volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. So we filter ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear to be losers in order to spend our question-answering time more efficiently, on winners.

If you find this attitude obnoxious, condescending, or arrogant, check your assumptions. We're not asking you to genuflect to us; in fact, most of us would love nothing more than to deal with you as an equal, if you put in the effort required to make that possible. If you can't live with this sort of discrimination, we suggest you pay somebody for a commercial support contract instead of asking hackers to personally donate help to you.

If you decide to come to us for help, you don't want to be one of the losers. You don't want to seem like one, either. The best way to get a rapid and responsive answer is to ask it like a winner; to ask it like a person with smarts, confidence, and clues who just happens to need help on one particular problem.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Before You Ask

Before asking a technical question by email, or in a newsgroup, or on a web site chat board, do the following:

1. Try to find an answer by reading a tutorial.
2. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
3. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
4. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.

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 peoples' time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated that they can learn from the answers.

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that you have put thought and effort into solving your problem before asking for help, the more likely you are to actually get help.

Beware of asking the wrong question. If you ask one that is based on faulty assumptions, J. Random Hacker is quite likely to reply with a uselessly literal answer while thinking "Stupid question...", and hoping that the experience of getting what you asked for rather than what you needed will teach you a lesson.

Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not; you aren't, after all, paying for the service. You will earn an answer, if you earn it, by asking a question that is substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking, one that implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.

On the other hand, making it clear that you are able and willing to help in the process of developing the solution is a very good start. "Can someone provide a pointer?", "What is my example missing?" and "Is there a site I should have checked?" are more likely to get answered than "Please post the exact procedure I should use." because you're making it clear that you're truly willing to complete the process if someone can simply point you in the right direction.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at thinking and coding (often enough to bet on, anyway). Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not rewarding; we'd rather spend our time elsewhere.

So expressing your question clearly and well is important. If you can't be bothered to do that, we can't be bothered to pay attention. Spend the extra effort to polish your language. It doesn't have to be stiff or formal - in fact, hacker culture values informal, slangy and humorous language used with precision. But it has to be precise; there has to be some indication that you're thinking and paying attention.

Spell correctly. Don't confuse "its" with "it's" or "loose" with "lose". Don't TYPE IN ALL CAPS, this is read as shouting and considered rude. If you write like a semi-literate boob, you will probably be ignored. Writing like a l33t script kiddie hax0r is the absolute kiss of death and guarantees you will receive nothing but stony silence (or, at best, a heaping helping of scorn and sarcasm) in return.

If you are asking questions in a forum that does not use your native language, you will get a limited amount of slack for spelling and grammar errors, but no extra slack at all for laziness (and yes, we can usually spot that difference). Also, unless you know what your respondent's languages are, write in English. Busy hackers tend to simply flush questions in languages they don't understand, and English is the working language of the net. By writing in English you minimise your chances that your question will be discarded unread.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Send questions in formats that are easy to understand

If you make your question artificially hard to read, it is more likely to be passed over in favour of one that isn't. So:

• Send plain text mail, not HTML.
• Don't send mail in which entire paragraphs are single multiply-wrapped lines. (This makes it too difficult to reply to just part of the message.)
• Don't send MIME Quoted-Printable encoding either; all those =20 glyphs scattered through the text are ugly and distracting.
• Never, ever expect hackers to be able to read closed proprietary document formats like Microsoft Word. Most hackers react to these about as well as you would to having a pile of steaming pig manure dumped on your doorstep.
• If you're sending mail from a Windows machine, turn off Microsoft's stupid "Smart Quotes" feature. This is so you avoid sprinkling garbage characters through your mail.

Use meaningful, specific subject headers

On mailing lists or newsgroups, the subject header is your golden opportunity to attract qualified experts' attention in around 50 characters or fewer. Don't waste it on babble like "Please help me" (let alone "PLEASE HELP ME!!!!"). Don't try to impress us with the depth of your anguish; use the space for a super-concise problem description instead.

Stupid:
HELP! Video doesn't work properly on my laptop!
Smart:
XFree86 4.1 misshapen mouse cursor, Fooware MV1005 vid. chipset

Be precise and informative about your problem

• Describe the symptoms of your problem or bug carefully and clearly.
• Describe the environment in which it occurs (machine, OS, application, whatever).
• Describe the research you did to try and understand the problem before you asked the question.
• Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down the problem yourself before you asked the question.
• Describe any recent changes in your computer or software configuration that might be relevant.

Do the best you can to anticipate the questions a hacker will ask, and to answer them in advance in your request for help. Simon Tatham has written an excellent essay entitled How to Report Bugs Effectively which can be found at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html.
I strongly recommend that you read it.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Don't ask people to reply by private email

Hackers believe solving problems should be a public, transparent process during which a first try at an answer can and should be corrected if someone more knowledgeable notices that it is incomplete or incorrect. Also, they get some of their reward for being respondents from being seen to be competent and knowledgeable by their peers.

When you ask for a private reply, you are disrupting both the process and the reward. Don't do this. It's the respondent's choice whether to reply privately, and if he does, it's usually because he thinks the question is too obvious or ill formed to be interesting to others.

There is one limited exception to this rule. If you think the question is such that you are likely to get a lot of answers that are all pretty similar, then the magic words are "email me and I'll summarise the answers for the group". It is courteous to try and save the mailing list or newsgroup a flood of substantially identical postings, but you have to keep the promise to summarise.

Prune pointless queries

Resist the temptation to close your request for help with semantically-null questions like "Can anyone help me?" or "Is there an answer?" First: if you've written your problem description halfway competently, such tacked-on questions are at best superfluous. Second: because they are superfluous, hackers find them annoying, and are likely to return logically impeccable but dismissive answers like "Yes, you can be helped" and "No, there is no help for you."

Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps

Be courteous. Use "Please" and "Thanks in advance". Make it clear that you appreciate the time people spend helping you for free. To be honest, this isn't as important as (and cannot substitute for) being grammatical, clear, precise and descriptive, avoiding proprietary formats etc.; hackers in general would rather get somewhat brusque but technically sharp bug reports than polite vagueness. (If this puzzles you, remember that we value a question by what it teaches us.)

However, if you've got your technical ducks in a row, politeness does increase your chances of getting a useful answer.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
How to Interpret Answers

RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You've Seriously Screwed Up
There is an ancient and hallowed tradition: if you get a reply that reads "RTFM", the person who sent it thinks you should have Read The ****ing Manual. He is almost certainly right. Go read it.

RTFM has a younger relative. If you get a reply that reads "STFW", the person who sent it thinks you should have Searched The ****ing Web. He is almost certainly right. Go search it.

Often, the person sending either of these replies has the manual or the web page with the information you need open, and is looking at it as he types. These replies mean that he thinks (a) the information you need is easy to find, and (b) you will learn more if you seek out the information than if you have it spoon-fed to you.

You shouldn't be offended by this; by hacker standards, he is showing you a rough kind of respect simply by not ignoring you. You should instead thank him for his grandmotherly kindness.

If you don't understand...

If you don't understand the answer, do not immediately bounce back a demand for clarification. Use the same tools that you used to try and answer your original question (manuals, FAQs, the Web, skilled friends) to understand the answer. If you need to ask for clarification, exhibit what you have learned.

For example, suppose I tell you: "It sounds like you've got a stuck zentry; you'll need to clear it." Then:
Here's a bad follow-up question:
"What's a zentry?"

Here's a good follow up question:
"OK, I read the man page and zentries are only mentioned under the -z and -p switches. Neither of them says anything about clearing zentries. Is it one of these or am I missing something here?"
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Dealing with rudeness

Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give offence. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bull**** communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.

When you perceive rudeness, try to react calmly. If someone is really acting out, it is very likely that a senior person on the list or newsgroup or forum will call him or her on it. If that doesn't happen and you lose your temper, it is likely that the person you lose it at was behaving within the hacker community's norms and you will be considered at fault. This will hurt your chances of getting the information or help you want.

On the other hand, you will occasionally run across rudeness and posturing that is quite gratuitous. The flip-side of the above is that it is acceptable form to slam real offenders quite hard, dissecting their misbehaviour with a sharp verbal scalpel. Be very, very sure of your ground before you try this, however. The line between correcting an incivility and starting a pointless flame war is thin enough that hackers themselves not infrequently blunder across it; if you are a newbie or an outsider, your chances of avoiding such a blunder are low. If you're after information rather than entertainment, it's better to keep your fingers off the
keyboard than to risk this.

(Some people assert that many hackers have a mild form of autism or Asperger's Syndrome, and are actually missing some of the brain circuitry that lubricates `normal' human social interaction. This may or may not be true. If you are not a hacker yourself, it may help you cope if you think of us as brain-damaged. Go ahead. We won't care; we like being whatever it is we are, and generally have a healthy scepticism about clinical labels.)

In the next section, we'll talk about a different issue; the kind of `rudeness' you'll see when you misbehave.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Questions Not To Ask

Here are some classic stupid questions, and what hackers are thinking when they don't answer them.

Q: Where can I find program X?
A: The same place I'd find it, fool -- at the other end of a web search. Ghod, doesn't everybody know how to use Google yet?

Q: My {program, configuration, SQL statement} doesn't work
A: This is not a question, and I'm not interested in playing Twenty Questions to pry your actual question out of you — I have better things to do. On seeing something like this, my reaction is normally of one of the following:


• do you have anything else to add to that?
• oh, that's too bad, I hope you get it fixed.
• and this has exactly what to do with me?


Q: I'm having problems with my Windows machine. Can you help?
A: Yes. Throw out that Microsoft trash and install Linux.

Q: I'm having problems installing Linux or X. Can you help?
A: No. I'd need hands-on access to your machine to troubleshoot this. Go ask your local Linux user group for hands-on help. (You can find a list of user groups here:
http://www.linux.org/groups/index.html.

Q: How can I crack root/steal channel-ops privileges/read someone's email?
A: You're a lowlife for wanting to do such things and a moron for asking a hacker to help you.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Good and Bad Questions

Finally, I'm going to illustrate how to ask questions in a smart way by example; pairs of questions about the same problem, one asked in a stupid way and one in a smart way.

Stupid: Where can I find out stuff about the Foonly Flurbamatic?
This question just begs for "STFW" as a reply.
Smart: I used Google to try to find "Foonly Flurbamatic 2600" on the Web, but I got no useful hits. Does anyone know where I can
find programming information on this device?

This one has already SFTWed, and sounds like he might have a real problem.

Stupid: I can't get the code from project foo to compile. Why is it broken?

He assumes that somebody else screwed up. Arrogant
of him.

Smart: The code from project foo doesn't compile under Nulix version 6.2. I've read the FAQ, but it doesn't have anything in it about Nulixrelated problems. Here's a transcript of my
compilation attempt; is it something I did?

He's specified the environment, he's read the FAQ, he's showing the error, and he's not assuming his problems are someone else's fault. This guy might be worth some attention.

Stupid: I'm having problems with my motherboard. Can anybody help?

J. Random Hacker's response to this is likely to be "Right. Do you need burping and diapering, too?" followed by a punch of the delete key.

Smart: I tried X, Y, and Z on the S2464 motherboard. When that didn't work, I tried A, B, and C. Note the curious symptom when I tried C. Obviously the florbish is grommicking, but the results aren't what one might expect. What are the usual causes of grommicking on MP motherboards? Anybody got ideas for more
tests I can run to pin down the problem?

This person, on the other hand, seems worthy of an answer. He has exhibited problem-solving intelligence rather than waiting for an answer to drop from on high.

In the last question, notice the subtle but important difference between demanding "Give me an answer" and "Please help me figure out what additional diagnostics I can run to achieve enlightenment."

In fact, the form of that last question is closely based on a real incident that happened in August 2001 on the linuxkernel mailing list. I (Eric) was the one asking the question that time. I was seeing mysterious lockups on a Tyan S2464 motherboard. The list members supplied the critical information I needed to solve them.

By asking the question in the way I did, I gave people something to chew on; I made it easy and attractive for them to get involved. I demonstrated respect for my peers' ability and invited them to consult with me as a peer. I also demonstrated respect for the value of their time by telling them the blind alleys I had already run down.

Afterwards, when I thanked everyone and remarked how well the process had worked, an lkml member observed that he thought it had worked not because I'm a "name" on that list, but because I asked the question in the proper form.

We hackers are in some ways a very ruthless meritocracy; I'm certain he was right, and that if I had behaved like a sponge I would have been flamed or ignored no matter who I was. His suggestion that I write up the whole incident as an instruction to others led directly to the composition of this guide.
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
If You Can't Get an Answer

If you can't get an answer, please don't take it personally that we don't feel we can help you. Sometimes the members of the asked group may simply not know the answer. No response is not the same as being ignored, though admittedly it's hard to spot the difference from outside.

In general, simply re-posting your question is a bad idea. This will be seen as pointlessly annoying.

There are other sources of help you can go to, often sources better adapted to a novice's needs.

There are many online and local user groups who are enthusiasts about the software, even though they may never have written any software themselves. These groups often form so that people can help each other and help new users.

There are also plenty of commercial companies you can contract with for help, both large and small (Red Hat and LinuxCare are two of the best known; there are many others). Don't be dismayed at the idea of having to pay for a bit of help! After all, if your car engine blows a head gasket, chances are, you will take it to a repair shop and pay to get it fixed. Even if the software didn't cost you anything, you can't expect that support will always come for free.

For popular software like Linux, there are at least 10000 users per developer. It's just not possible for one person to handle the support calls from over 10000 users. Remember that even if you have to pay for support, you are still paying much less than if you had to buy the software as well (andsupport for closed-source software is usually more expensive and less competent than support for open-source software).
 

NovaDude

New Member
Jun 15, 2004
14
0
0
Hey,

Now this text is the best, but lets be honest now.

Anyone who is sloppy and a lousy writer, one who doesn't look before he asks, you think such ones read all that? Wrong! They won't :(

Nova
 

[SAS]Solid Snake

New Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,633
0
0
40
New Zealand
www.digitalconfectioners.com
Yeah, your right, but hopefully someone will link them to this post and then they will be a little better than constantly bumping their old questions up. However, it seems to occur a little less now. Most of the notes made here aren't something people have to learn really, as most programmers can understand another programmer when it comes to questions. It's mainly the people who don't code a lot and expect answers from us coders...
 

Gothic Knight

New Member
Jul 13, 2004
5
0
0
Wow did u guys acutallu read all that? Cuz it sounds to me like someone thinks theyre apart of some "super race" of intelligent hackers. Thats kinda alot of work just to ask a simple question. :lol: