Asking Smart Questions

If you're casually reading this, you might make the mistake of thinking this all sounds like "the best way to ask questions is to not ask questions at all." This is not what this means at all.

Asking good questions is incredibly important, both in developing your own understanding of a concept, and in developing that of others. If you ask a good question and one someone is able to answer it, most likely you're not the only one learning from it.

Asking a good question feels a lot better than asking a bad question, and answering a good question feels amazing. Answering a bad question, on the other hand, feels like a waste of time, so people eventually stop doing it and start avoiding you.

Also note that a bad question is not a question which "most people already know the answer to". In this context, a bad question is simply a lazy question, one which you have made little to no effort of answering by yourself.

To get a good answer to a problem, you need to be able to develop your questions suitably. Asking a good question is a difficult process, whereas asking a poor question will only display laziness and make people less likely to help you. Learning to ask questions the smart way may also help you to answer them yourself, or help others get their questions answered.

1. Ask yourself, is this the right question?
2. Read the man page
3. Search the internet
4. Try what you find

Often, the question you're asking is already answered elsewhere, or even documented. If you don't look for an answer to your own question before asking someone else, you're just being lazy, and the people you're asking will tell you that.

RTFM (read the f####ng manual) and STFW (search the f####ng web, sometimes written "google is your friend") are not insults. They're instructions, and often will lead to you finding your answer.

If you are unsure where to start, make that your question. Maybe someone will kindly guide you through starting, before setting you off on your own.

If through this process you have found an answer, try it! See if it works! This should be obvious, but apparently not to everyone.

There is also the case to consider, does the question you want to ask make sense? Avoid "X Y problems", don't get stuck on a particular style of solution to a problem that is best solved another way. If you absolutely must use a particular method, make sure to justify that when asking the question.

In short, before giving other people your problem, try to solve it yourself. If you can't do that, then ask, making sure to say what you have tried.

Regardless of what your question is about, you should send what you have tried, and if it failed then also post how or why it failed. Making sure to include this in your question should also remind you to try solving your own problem before giving it to other people. If you don't include what you have already tried, people are likely to send you things you have already done, wasting more of both theirs and your own time.

If you want someone to help you with your code, post the error, the code and what you want it to do.

If you want help understanding a concept, post what your current understanding of it, so people who understand it better are able to see what you need help with specifically.

If you want help finding a piece of software or algorithm to suit your needs, post the context and the desired goal. Post what you have found or considered and why it is not enough. In the case of the piece of software, perhaps one of the solutions you found is enough and you only have to configure it a bit, though what you need to change specifically might be hiding somewhere in the documentation.

Most of these should be obvious. Unfortunately, to some people they apparently aren't.

Firstly, make sure that you're asking in the right place. If you ask for help writing C in a channel for OCaml, either everyone will ignore you or someone will tell you go to the appropriate channel.

Regardless of whether your question is smart or not, don't ask to ask. Just ask your question, or people (should) ignore you. No one wants to lock themselves into helping you, just because you didn't send the details. If, by some miracle, someone does want to help you, by not having posted any details about your question you waste their time, as they now have to ask you for details.

Don't open direct/private messages with people to ask for help, unless agreed with them beforehand that you can do so. Post in the public channel, where everyone can see what you need help with and anyone can help you.

Don't ask the same question in multiple channels. Someone may answer your question in one of them, then someone else might answer the same question in the other channel. Managing answers in different channels is a hassle for you, and it's a waste of time for the second person.

If you're sent a link to https://dontasktoask.com/ you probably just asked a bad question. Don't let that put you off, put more detail into your question and don't make the same mistake in future.

If you're told to RTFM or STFW, don't take this as an insult. Someone has just told you that the answer to your question already exits. If you have already done both of these and still can't find it, explain what you have looked at and they should guide you to the correct place. In future, send more details with the original question.

If you're told to go to a different channel, you should probably go to that channel. If you still believe that you shouldn't be asking elsewhere, explain so, but don't start any arguments.

If you're told not to send the same question in multiple channels, or to get out of DMs and ask in the public channel, then that's really just on you. Apologise and move on.

This is really only if you feel benevolent, but it can help other people a lot. If you feel that other people would benefit from knowing about your problem and the solution you made for it, put that online for other people to find. Some ways you could do that are:

• You could write a public gist, explaining what it's for.
• You could write a blog post, detailing the problem and the solution.
• You could make a question on some forum, like StackOverflow, and answer it yourself (or send the question link to the person who helped you).