How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

by xvirk • 11 years ago

71 17 11 years ago

I do all of this at the start of the day. But after unblocking myself multiple times, I just don't have the juice to make sure I'm not asking a stupid question.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

Aren't you worried about getting a lousy response?

kelukelugames3• 11 years ago

Yes? No? Maybe?

I also expect my co workers to both ask and forgive a simple question once in a while. Otherwise it might be time to seek a friendlier work environment.

dgomez1092• 11 years ago

Well glad I read this. What first came to mond was that ontologically framing a technical question is difficult. You can't ever seem to deduce a decent level of aptitude unless you become part of a comminity (working on it). So the first part, don't be stupid, well being ignorant pretty much leads me to believe I am stupid. Probably should prepend a statement with what I don't know. But spmetimes I have stupid questiin, just yesterday, I wasnt able to get why my `src` attribute was locating a local file. Simply, it was all due to a `/`. Talk about idiot. Secondly, the subject line, is it reasonable to assume that this can be a skill transposable from what social media marketers have been known to do? :p Everyone who is passionate about a facet of study should make succinct attention grabbing subject lines. Thanks for the reinforcement!! lastly it was revealing to get a better sense of how it's better to explain how you're stuck by phrasing the process you're taking to meet a goal. Thanks for letting me comment.

ColinWright• 11 years ago

You might want to look at the discussions from some of the previous occasions this has been posted. Here are just two:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2911381

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=682522

There are more:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20questions%20the%20smart%...

More particularly, though, there are alternative documents that get a better response. I've submitted one of them here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258946

It tries to be more aware of the "people issues" involved, and not be so "aggressively nerdish."

tptacek• 11 years ago

A smiley or two is usually OK, but colored fancy text tends to make people think you are lame. Seriously overusing smileys and color and fonts will make you come off like a giggly teenage girl, which is not generally a good idea unless you are more interested in sex than answers.

Ok then, ESR.

vacri• 11 years ago

Reading through the Disclaimer and Introduction, it seems that a 'How To Write Reference Articles' might be in order. It's almost as if the article is a parody; the how-to that admins sometimes wish they could point their users at.

A cute, maybe self-referential bit at the end, in the section "On Not Reacting Like A Loser": When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the experience...

serve_yay• 11 years ago

Skimming this just makes me sigh.

emmelaich• 11 years ago

Most people who need to read this never will. It's too long.

I think it would be better to have them remember the first four of the the 5 w's: who, what, where, when.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

Then perhaps only after that, ask why. Perhaps 5 times:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

navait• 11 years ago

Every time I read ESR's stuff, I get the impression that he believes all hackers think exactly like him. Even worse, I can't imagine anyone, hacker or otherwise, wanting to be around a person that was anywhere near his conception of hacker. There's some good information here, but a lot of stuff that's him pushing his belief system and claiming it represents an entire community.

The most absurd:

Don't send e-mail in which entire paragraphs are single multiply-wrapped lines. (This makes it too difficult to reply to just part of the message.) Assume that your respondents will be reading mail on 80-character-wide text displays and set your line wrap accordingly, to something less than 80.

Sure. People still use 80 line characters. Riiiight.

I think it's more important to stress that people can't(and probobly won't)help you if you can't communicate your problem clearly, not that some person is going to rip you a one for disturbing the sancticty of their forum. I don't think very many people spend time berating stupid questions unless they like doing so, and most of those people are going to do so regardless of what you wrote.

RMS can be odd and backwards, but he basically founded FOSS, the community, and done a lot for the world. I really can't think of much ESR has really done for FOSS, and mostly just makes hacking look bad by claiming to hackers. If only he didn't come up so high on a google search for hacker.

How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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