How to ask questions correctly

Carefully consider where to ask the question. You are most likely to be ignored or spilled as a loser if you:

Hackers ignore questions directed to the wrong address so as not to load their communication channels with irrelevant information. Do not get into this category of questions.

Therefore, first you need to find the appropriate forum. This will help you again with the Google search engine and other search tools on the Web. Use them to find the project page most closely associated with the hardware or software that you are experiencing difficulties with. Usually on this page there will be links to a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ, FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions), mailing lists of the project and their archives. That's where you need to ask for help, if your own efforts ( including reading these, found by you, FAQ) have not been successful. The project page can also describe the procedure for informing about the error or a link to it is provided. In this case, use the recommended procedure.

Sending the same message to a person or to a forum that you are not familiar with is an enterprise that is at least risky. For example, do not think that the author of an informative web page wants to become your free consultant. Do not make optimistic assumptions that your question will be glad - if not sure, send it to another address or refuse its parcel at all.

When choosing a Web-forum, discussion group or mailing list, do not make a decision based only on the name; Read the list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) or rules to make sure that the question corresponds to the topic. Read the messages for a while before sending questions to feel how and what is being done here. In fact, before sending a question it does not hurt to search for keywords related to your problem in the archives of a discussion group or mailing list. As a result, you can find the answer, and if not, this search will help to formulate the question better.

Do not use all available help channels at the same time. It's like a cry and outrages people. Address them in turn.

Correctly define the topic! One of the classic mistakes is to ask a question about the Unix or Windows programming interface in a forum dedicated to a language, library, or tool running on both platforms. If you do not understand why this is a gross mistake, do not ask questions until you understand.

In general, the probability of getting answers to questions in a properly chosen public forum is higher than in a private forum. There are several reasons for this. One of them is the number of potential responders. Another is the size of the audience that will know the answer; Hackers with great pleasure answer questions that may interest many than questions that are useful only to units.

It is clear that experienced hackers and creators of popular programs already get much more irrelevant issues than they would like. By increasing this flow, in some cases you can become the last straw - sometimes participants in popular projects stop supporting them, because they do not endure any more attendant problems in the form of a stream of useless messages by e-mail to their personal addresses.

Your local user group or your Linux distribution can support a Web-based forum or IRC channel designed to help beginners. (In non-English-speaking countries, forums for beginners are still most likely organized as mailing lists.) These are suitable places for the initial assignment of questions, especially if it is assumed that you are faced with a relatively simple or typical problem. The publicly advertised IRC channel is an explicit invitation to ask questions, and, often, the ability to receive real-time responses.

In fact, if the program you are having problems with is taken from the distribution (which is typical today), it may be better to ask the forum / mailing list for the corresponding distribution first before contacting the forum / mailing list. Hackers working on the project can simply answer: "Use our assembly".

Before asking a question in any Web-forum, check whether it is possible to search on it. And if it is, look for a couple of key words on a discussion of a problem like yours; this can help. If before that you performed a general search on the Web (what should be done), still look at the forum; Perhaps your search engine has not indexed this forum for a long time.

There is an interesting tendency to support project users through a Web-forum or IRC channel, leaving an e-mail for communication between developers. Therefore, if you need help with the project, please consult these sources of information first.

If the project has a mailing list for developers, send questions to this mailing list, rather than to individual developers, even if you are sure that you know who can best answer your question. Find the address of the mailing list of the project in the documentation or on the project website, and send a question to this address. There are several good reasons for doing this:

If the project has separate mailing lists or Web forums for "users" and for "developers" (or "hackers"), and you do not deal with (hacking) the code, ask the question in the list / forum for "users". Do not count on a warm welcome on the mailing list for developers, where your question is likely to fall into the category of "noise" that interferes with the exchange of information about the development process.

However, if you are sure of the non-triviality of your question and have not received an answer in the mailing list / forum for "users" for several days, contact the developers. It makes sense to follow the appropriate mailing list or forum for several days before to learn its traditions (in fact, it makes sense to do this before contacting any private or semi-closed mailing list).

If you can not find the address of the mailing list of the project, but the address of the person who leads the project is known, send your question to the presenter. But in this case, do not think that there is no mailing list. In your message, indicate that you tried, but could not find the appropriate mailing list. Also mention that you are not against sending your message to other recipients. (Many people think that personal correspondence should remain personal, even if nothing is secret about it.) By allowing you to forward your message, you give people a choice.)

When sending a message to the mailing list or to a discussion group, the subject of the message is a great opportunity to attract the attention of qualified experts in a string of up to 50 characters. Do not spend them on babbling like "Help me, please" (not to mention the "PLEASE HELP ME !!!!" topics; messages with such themes are rejected reflexively). Do not try to impress us with the depth of your suffering; It is better to use the allotted space for the shortest possible description of the problem.

A good agreement on the design of message topics used by many technical support services is the use of the "object-deviation" template. The "object" part specifies what exactly the problem arose, and the "deviation" part describes the deviation from the expected behavior.

The process of writing a theme using the "object-deviation" template will help to understand the problem in more detail. What exactly is working wrong? Only the mouse cursor or with other graphics, too, have problems? The only problem is XFree86? Only in version 4.1? This problem occurs only on video cards with a Fooware chipset? Only in the model MV1005? Hacker, after receiving a message with a similar topic, will be able to, in general terms, understand what exactly you had a problem with and what kind of problem it is.

In general, imagine that you are browsing the list of questions in the archive, in which only the subject lines are represented. Make the subject line reflect the essence of the issue rather well and the next viewing archive in search of an answer to such a question could find a discussion leading to an answer rather than sending the question again.

If you ask a question in response, do not forget to change the subject line so that it is clear on it - a question is asked. A subject line like "Re: test" or "Re: new bug" will not attract enough attention. In addition, keep the quotes of previous messages to a minimum sufficient to enable new users to understand what was being said.

Do not just send a reply to the mailing list message if you are going to discuss a new topic (start a discussion thread). This will narrow the circle of respondents. Some mail readers, such as mutt , allow the user to sort messages by topic, and then hide messages on the topic, minimizing the thread of the discussion. Those who use this opportunity will never see your message.

It's not enough to change the subject. Mutt, and possibly other e-mail readers, take into account not only the subject line, but also other information in the message headers when binding them to the discussion thread. Create an entirely new message.

In Web forums, discussion rules differ slightly, because messages are usually more closely related to specific threads of discussion and are often invisible outside of these threads. Changing the topic when asking a question in the answer is not essential (not all forums even allow you to specify topics in the answers, and if they can be asked, practically nobody reads them). But, asking a counter question in return is in itself a dubious practice, since only those who follow the corresponding thread of the discussion will see this question. Therefore, if you are not sure that you want to address specifically to those who participate in the discussion of the topic, start a new topic.

Completion of the question with the phrase "An answer, please send to the address ..." makes the receipt of the answer very unlikely. If you do not have a couple of seconds to correctly set the Reply-To header in your email program, then we do not have a couple of seconds to think about your problem. If your email program does not allow you to do this - throw it out. If your operating system does not support email programs that allow you to do this, look for the operating system better.

Asking to respond by e-mail in Web forums is extremely impolite, unless you are sure that information can be confidential (and someone, for some unknown reason, will want to tell it to you personally, not the entire forum). If you want to receive a notification by mail that someone answered the topic in the forum, request this notification in the interface of the Web-forum; This feature is supported almost everywhere in the form of the options "watch this thread", "send email on answers", etc.)

It has been experimentally established that people who write inattentively and carelessly are usually as inattentive and careless in the thoughts and code of the programs being created (at least, often enough to confidently state so). Answering the questions of people who are inattentive and careless in thinking is an ungrateful occupation; We will spend our time on something else.

Therefore, the clarity and correctness of the wording of the question matters. If you do not want to fool yourself with this head, we do not want to fool yourself, paying attention to such issues. Try to formulate the question in the right language. It should not be heavy and formal - in fact, in hacker culture, an informal, full of slang and humorous language is used, which is used correctly. But thoughts should be expressed clearly; It is necessary to demonstrate at least some signs of thoughtfulness and attention.

Observe the rules of syntax, punctuation and capitalization. Do not confuse "its" with "it's", "loose" with "lose" or "discrete" with "discreet". DO NOT WRITE ALL IN THE UPPER REGISTER, - this is perceived as a cry and is considered rude. (If everything is written in lowercase, it's not much better, because it's so hard to read.) Alan Cox says it's goodbye, but you do not.)

In general, if you write at the level of childish babbling or delirium crazy, your question is likely to be ignored. The scripture in the style of the young "Khatskers" (in the original - l33t script kiddie hax0r) is absolutely hopeless, and guarantees in return - silence (or, at best, a dose of neglect and sarcasm).

If you ask questions in a forum where you do not use your native language, then some lexical and grammatical errors will be forgiven - but do not expect any forgiveness of elementary laziness (yes, we are usually able to understand the difference). In addition, if you do not know exactly which languages ​​for the addressee - native, write in English. Busy hackers usually just skip questions in languages ​​they do not understand, and English is the working language of the Internet. Asking a question in English, you reduce the likelihood that it will be missed without reading.

If you artificially make it difficult to read the question, the probability increases that you will be answered instead of a question that is not difficult to read. Therefore:

When using an email client with a graphical interface (for example, Netscape Messenger, MS Outlook and the like), remember that it can violate these rules when using standard settings. In most such clients, the menu has a command of the type "View Source". Check with her help on one of the sent messages that the normal text is sent, without excess garbage.

Do the utmost to anticipate potential questions of a hacker and answer them in advance in your appeal for help.

Simon Tatham wrote a wonderful essay entitled How to effectively report errors . I highly recommend reading it.

Be accurate and informative. To do this, it is not enough simply to insert a large amount of code or data into the query. If there is a large, complex test case leading to an error in the program, try to minimize it as much as possible.

This is useful, at least, for three reasons. The first: the demonstrated efforts to simplify the issue increase the probability of receiving a response. The second: simplifying the question raises the probability of obtaining a useful answer. Third, during the clarification of the error message, you can find a solution or a method to work around the problem yourself.

If there are problems with this or that software, do not claim to have found a mistake unless absolutely sure about it. Tip: If you can not provide a source code fix that solves a problem or a test case for a previous version that shows incorrect behavior, you are probably not sure about your application.

Remember that many other users with this problem did not come across. Otherwise, you would have already learned about this when reading the documentation or when searching the Web (you did it before you make such statements, do you ?). This means that, most likely, it is you who are doing something wrong, not software.

The creators of software make great efforts to ensure that it works as well as possible. If you claim to have found a mistake, then, by the same token, they assume that they have done something wrong, and they almost certainly will not like it - even if you are right. Especially undiplomatic will write "bug" ("Error") in the subject line of the message.

When asking a question, it is better to describe the problem, based on the assumption that you are doing something wrong, even if you are personally absolutely sure that you have found a mistake. If this is really a mistake, you will read about it in the answer. Try to behave so that people who support the program want to apologize to you if a real error is found, and not that you have to apologize for your stupidity.

It is likely that you have already screwed up several times in hacker forums - as described in this article, or similarly. And you have already explained how you fucked up, possibly in paint. With all honest people.

When this happens, the most unsuccessful reaction is to complain about what happened, to consider yourself insulted verbally, to demand an apology, to yell, to gasp for anger, to sue in court, to complain to employers of offenders, not to lower the toilet seat, etc. Instead of all this, you need to do the following:

To accept. This is normal. In fact, it is good and expedient.

Public norms do not support themselves - they are supported by people, actively, openly, publicly, these norms apply. Do not think that criticism should only be in personal correspondence - this is not so. It does not make sense to take as someone's insult someone's comment that one of your statements is wrong, or that he has another opinion. This is how losers act.

There were hacker forums where, based on misunderstood hypertrophied politeness, participants were forbidden to send messages about errors in other people's messages. They were told: "If you do not want to help the user, be silent." The outflow of knowledgeable participants to other forums led to their degeneration into meaningless chatter and to complete uselessness from a technical point of view.

Choose: exaggerated "friendliness" (of this kind) or utility.

Remember: when this hacker writes that you have screwed up, and (no matter how grossly) he asks you not to do it any more, he does it, caring, firstly, about you, and secondly, about his community. It would be much easier for him to ignore and strike out of his life. If you do not have enough for gratitude, keep dignity - do not complain, and do not think that you will be treated like a fragile doll just because you are a beginner with a theatrically hypersensitive soul and illusions about your own worth.

Sometimes people will go to the person, enter into a dirty controversy for no apparent reason, etc., even if you did not fuck up (or fucked up only in their imagination). To be outraged in this case is the way to really screw up.

These "scandalists" are either lamers who do not understand anything, but consider themselves experts, or potential psychologists who check whether you are screwed or not. Other readers will either ignore them, or find ways to deal with them independently. The behavior of the brawlers creates problems for themselves, which should not bother you.

Do not let yourself be dragged into a useless "bazaar." It is better to ignore such discussions, having figured out beforehand that this is really useless "bazaar", and not hints at why you really screwed up, and not subtly ciphered answers to your actual questions (this also happens).

Here are a number of classic stupid questions and what hackers think about when they are not answered.