http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Eric Steven Raymond
Thyrsus Enterprises
Rick Moen
Copyright (c) 2001,2006,2014 Eric S. Raymond, Rick Moen
Revision History
Revision 3.10 21 May 2014 esr
New section on Stack Overflow.
Revision 3.9 23 Apr 2013 esr
URL fixes.
Revision 3.8 19 Jun 2012 esr
URL fix.
Revision 3.7 06 Dec 2010 esr
Helpful hints for ESL speakers.
Revision 3.7 02 Nov 2010 esr
Several translations have disappeared.
Revision 3.6 19 Mar 2008 esr
Minor update and new links.
Revision 3.5 2 Jan 2008 esr
Typo fix and some translation links.
Revision 3.4 24 Mar 2007 esr
New section, "When asking about code".
Revision 3.3 29 Sep 2006 esr
Folded in a good suggestion from Kai Niggemann.
Revision 3.2 10 Jan 2006 esr
Folded in edits from Rick Moen.
Revision 3.1 28 Oct 2004 esr
Document 'Google is your friend!'
Revision 3.0 2 Feb 2004 esr
Major addition of stuff about proper etiquette on Web forums.
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Table of Contents
Translations
Disclaimer
Introduction
Before You Ask
When You Ask
Choose your forum carefully
Stack Overflow
Web and IRC forums
As a second step, use project mailing lists
Use meaningful, specific subject headers
Make it easy to reply
Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
Send questions in accessible, standard formats
Be precise and informative about your problem
Volume is not precision
Don't rush to claim that you have found a bug
Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework
Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses
Describe your problem's symptoms in chronological order
Describe the goal, not the step
Don't ask people to reply by private e-mail
Be explicit about your question
When asking about code
Don't post homework questions
Prune pointless queries
Don't flag your question as "Urgent", even if it is for you
Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Follow up with a brief note on the solution
How To Interpret Answers
RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You've Seriously Screwed Up
If you don't understand...
Dealing with rudeness
On Not Reacting Like A Loser
Questions Not To Ask
Good and Bad Questions
If You Can't Get An Answer
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way
Related Resources
Acknowledgements
Translations
Translations: Brazilo-Portuguese Chinese (Traditional) Czech Dutch
Estonian French Georgian German Greek Hindi Hungarian Indonesion
Japanese Lithuanian Polish Portuguese Russian Spanish Ukrainian Uzbek
If you want to copy, mirror, translate, or excerpt this document,
please see my copying policy.
Disclaimer
Many project websites link to this document in their sections on how
to get help. That's fine, it's the use we intended -- but if you are a
webmaster creating such a link for your project page, please display
prominently near the link notice that we are not a help desk for your
project!
We have learned the hard way that without such a notice, we will
repeatedly be pestered by idiots who think having published this
document makes it our job to solve all the world's technical
problems.
If you're reading this document because you need help, and you walk
away with the impression you can get it directly from the authors of
this document, you are one of the idiots we are talking about. Don't
ask us questions. We'll just ignore you. We are here to show you how
to get help from people who actually know about the software or
hardware you're dealing with, but 99.9% of the time that will not be
us. Unless you know for certain that one of the authors is an expert
on what you're dealing with, leave us alone and everybody will be
happier.
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 more likely to get you a
satisfactory answer.
Now that use of open source has become widespread, you can often get
as good answers from other, more experienced users as from hackers.
This is a Good Thing; users tend to be just a little bit more
tolerant of the kind of failures newbies often have. Still, treating
experienced users like hackers in the ways we recommend here will
generally be the most effective way to get useful answers out of
them, too.
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. 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 to do their own homework before asking
questions. People like that are time sinks -- they take without giving
back, and 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 realize that there are many people who just want to use the
software we write, and who 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 and welcome you into our culture, if you put in the effort
required to make that possible. But it's simply not efficient for us
to try to help people who are not willing to help themselves. It's OK
to be ignorant; it's not OK to play stupid.
So, while it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to
get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of
attitude that leads to competence -- alert, thoughtful, observant,
willing to be an active partner in developing a solution. 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 person with smarts,
confidence, and clues who just happens to need help on one particular
problem.
(Improvements to this guide are welcome. You can mail suggestions to
esr@thyrsus.com or respond-auto@linuxmafia.com. Note however that
this document is not intended to be a general guide to netiquette,
and we will generally reject suggestions that are not specifically
related to eliciting useful answers in a technical forum.)
Before You Ask
Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or
on a website chat board, do the following:
1. Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum or
mailing list you plan to post to.
2. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
3. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
4. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
5. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
6. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
7. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the
source code.
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 people's time. Better yet, display what you have
learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for
people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.
Use tactics like doing a Google search on the text of whatever error
message you get (searching Google groups as well as Web pages). This
might well take you straight to fix documentation or a mailing list
thread answering your question. Even if it doesn't, saying "I googled
on the following phrase but didn't get anything that looked promising
" is a good thing to do in e-mail or news postings requesting help,
if only because it records what searches won't help. It will also
help to direct other people with similar problems to your thread by
linking the search terms to what will hopefully be your problem and
resolution thread.
Take your time. Do not expect to be able to solve a complicated
problem with a few seconds of Googling. Read and understand the FAQs,
sit back, relax and give the problem some thought before approaching
experts. Trust us, they will be able to tell from your questions how
much reading and thinking you did, and will be more willing to help
if you come prepared. Don't instantly fire your whole arsenal of
questions just because your first search turned up no answers (or too
many).
Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get
hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that
having put thought and effort into solving your problem before
seeking 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 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 substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking
question -- 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.
"Would someone provide a pointer?", "What is my example missing?",
and "What site should I 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 just point you in the right direction.
When You Ask
Choose your forum carefully
Be sensitive in choosing where you ask your question. You are likely
to be ignored, or written off as a loser, if you:
* post your question to a forum where it's off topic
* post a very elementary question to a forum where advanced
technical questions are expected, or vice-versa
* cross-post to too many different newsgroups
* post a personal e-mail to somebody who is neither an acquaintance
of yours nor personally responsible for solving your problem
Hackers blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order
to try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in
irrelevance. You don't want this to happen to you.
The first step, therefore, is to find the right forum. Again, Google
and other Web-searching methods are your friend. Use them to find the
project webpage most closely associated with the hardware or software
giving you difficulties. Usually it will have links to a FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions) list, and to project mailing lists and
their archives. These mailing lists are the final places to go for
help, if your own efforts (including reading those FAQs you found) do
not find you a solution. The project page may also describe a
bug-reporting procedure, or have a link to one; if so, follow it.
Shooting off an e-mail to a person or forum which you are not
familiar with is risky at best. For example, do not assume that the
author of an informative webpage wants to be your free consultant. Do
not make optimistic guesses about whether your question will be
welcome -- if you're unsure, send it elsewhere, or refrain from
sending it at all.
When selecting a Web forum, newsgroup or mailing list, don't trust
the name by itself too far; look for a FAQ or charter to verify your
question is on-topic. Read some of the back traffic before posting so
you'll get a feel for how things are done there. In fact, it's a very
good idea to do a keyword search for words relating to your problem
on the newsgroup or mailing list archives before you post. It may
find you an answer, and if not it will help you formulate a better
question.
Don't shotgun-blast all the available help channels at once, that's
like yelling and irritates people. Step through them softly.
Know what your topic is! One of the classic mistakes is asking
questions about the Unix or Windows programming interface in a forum
devoted to a language or library or tool portable across both. If you
don't understand why this is a blunder, you'd be best off not asking
any questions at all until you get it.
In general, questions to a well-selected public forum are more likely
to get useful answers than equivalent questions to a private one.
There are multiple reasons for this. One is simply the size of the
pool of potential respondents. Another is the size of the audience;
hackers would rather answer questions that educate many people than
questions serving only a few.
Understandably, skilled hackers and authors of popular software are
already receiving more than their fair share of mis-targeted
messages. By adding to the flood, you could in extreme cases even be
the straw that breaks the camel's back -- quite a few times,
contributors to popular projects have withdrawn their support because
collateral damage in the form of useless e-mail traffic to their
personal accounts became unbearable.
Stack Overflow
Search, then ask on Stack Exchange
In recent years, the Stack Exchange community of sites has emerged as
a major resource for answering technical and other questions and is
even the preferred forum for many open-source projects.
Start with a Google search before looking at Stack Exchange; Google
indexes it in real time. There's a very good chance someone has
already asked a similar question, and the Stack Exchange sites are
often near the top of the search results. If you didn't find anything
through Google, search again on the specific site most relevant to
your question (see below). Searching with tags can help narrow down
the results.
If you still didn't find anything, post your question on the one site
where it's most on-topic. Use the formatting tools, especially for
code, and add tags that are related to the substance of your question
(particularly the name of the programming language, operating system,
or library you're having trouble with). If a commenter asks you for
more information, edit your main post to include it. If any answer is
helpful, click the up arrow to upvote it; if an answer gives a
solution to your problem, click the check under the voting arrows to
accept it as correct.
Stack Exchange has grown to over 100 sites, but here are the most
likely candidates:
* Super User is for questions about general-purpose computing. If
your question isn't about code or programs that you talk to only
over a network connection, it probably goes here.
* Stack Overflow is for questions about programming.
* Server Fault is for questions about server and network
administration.
Several projects have their own specific sites, including Android,
Ubuntu, TeX/LaTeX, and SharePoint. Check the Stack Exchange site for
an up-to-date list.
Web and IRC forums
Your local user group, or your Linux distribution, may advertise a
Web forum or IRC channel where newbies can get help. (In
non-English-speaking countries newbie forums are still more likely to
be mailing lists.) These are good first places to ask, especially if
you think you may have tripped over a relatively simple or common
problem. An advertised IRC channel is an open invitation to ask
questions there and often get answers in real time.
In fact, if you got the program that is giving you problems from a
Linux distribution (as is common today), it may be better to ask in
the distro's forum/list before trying the program's project forum/
list. The project's hackers may just say, "use our build".
Before posting to any Web forum, check if it has a Search feature. If
it does, try a couple of keyword searches for something like your
problem; it just might help. If you did a general Web search before
(as you should have), search the forum anyway; your Web-wide search
engine might not have all of this forum indexed recently.
There is an increasing tendency for projects to do user support over
a Web forum or IRC channel, with e-mail reserved more for development
traffic. So look for those channels first when seeking
project-specific help.
In IRC, it's probably best not to dump a long problem description on
the channel first thing; some people interpret this as
channel-flooding. Best to utter a one-line problem description in a
way pitched to start a conversation on the channel.
As a second step, use project mailing lists
When a project has a development mailing list, write to the mailing
list, not to individual developers, even if you believe you know who
can best answer your question. Check the documentation of the project
and its homepage for the address of a project mailing list, and use
it. There are several good reasons for this policy:
* Any question good enough to be asked of one developer will also
be of value to the whole group. Contrariwise, if you suspect your
question is too dumb for a mailing list, it's not an excuse to
harass individual developers.
* Asking questions on the list distributes load among developers.
The individual developer (especially if he's the project leader)
may be too busy to answer your questions.
* Most mailing lists are archived and the archives are indexed by
search engines. If you ask your question on-list and it is
answered, a future querent could find your question and the
answer on the Web instead of asking it again.
* If certain questions are seen to be asked often, developers can
use that information to improve the documentation or the software
itself to be less confusing. But if those questions are asked in
private, nobody has the complete picture of what questions are
asked most often.
If a project has both a "user" and a "developer" (or "hacker")
mailing list or Web forum, and you are not hacking on the code, ask
in the "user" list/forum. Do not assume that you will be welcome on
the developer list, where they're likely to experience your question
as noise disrupting their developer traffic.
However, if you are sure your question is non-trivial, and you get no
answer in the "user" list/forum for several days, try the "developer"
one. You would be well advised to lurk there for a few daysor at
least review the last few days of archived messages, to learn the
local folkways before posting (actually this is good advice on any
private or semi-private list).
If you cannot find a project's mailing list address, but only see the
address of the maintainer of the project, go ahead and write to the
maintainer. But even in that case, don't assume that the mailing list
doesn't exist. Mention in your e-mail that you tried and could not
find the appropriate mailing list. Also mention that you don't object
to having your message forwarded to other people. (Many people
believe that private e-mail should remain private, even if there is
nothing secret in it. By allowing your message to be forwarded you
give your correspondent a choice about how to handle your e-mail.)
Use meaningful, specific subject headers
On mailing lists, newsgroups or Web forums, 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!!!!"; messages with subjects like
that get discarded by reflex). Don't try to impress us with the depth
of your anguish; use the space for a super-concise problem
description instead.
One good convention for subject headers, used by many tech support
organizations, is "object - deviation". The "object" part specifies
what thing or group of things is having a problem, and the "deviation
" part describes the deviation from expected behavior.
Stupid:
HELP! Video doesn't work properly on my laptop!
Smart:
X.org 6.8.1 misshapen mouse cursor, Fooware MV1005 vid. chipset
Smarter:
X.org 6.8.1 mouse cursor on Fooware MV1005 vid. chipset - is
misshapen
The process of writing an "object-deviation" description will help
you organize your thinking about the problem in more detail. What is
affected? Just the mouse cursor or other graphics too? Is this
specific to the X.org version of X? To version 6.8.1? Is this
specific to Fooware video chipsets? To model MV1005? A hacker who
sees the result can immediately understand what it is that you are
having a problem with and the problem you are having, at a glance.
More generally, imagine looking at the index of an archive of
questions, with just the subject lines showing. Make your subject
line reflect your question well enough that the next person searching
the archive with a question similar to yours will be able to follow
the thread to an answer rather than posting the question again.
If you ask a question in a reply, be sure to change the subject line
to indicate that you're asking a question. A Subject line that looks
like "Re: test" or "Re: new bug" is less likely to attract useful
amounts of attention. Also, pare quotation of previous messages to
the minimum consistent with cluing in new readers.
Do not simply hit reply to a list message in order to start an
entirely new thread. This will limit your audience. Some mail
readers, like mutt, allow the user to sort by thread and then hide
messages in a thread by folding the thread. Folks who do that will
never see your message.
Changing the subject is not sufficient. Mutt, and probably other mail
readers, looks at other information in the e-mail's headers to assign
it to a thread, not the subject line. Instead start an entirely new
e-mail.
On Web forums the rules of good practice are slightly different,
because messages are usually much more tightly bound to specific
discussion threads and often invisible outside those threads.
Changing the subject when asking a question in reply is not
essential. Not all forums even allow separate subject lines on
replies, and nearly nobody reads them when they do. However, asking a
question in a reply is a dubious practice in itself, because it will
only be seen by those who are watching this thread. So, unless you
are sure you want to ask only the people currently active in the
thread, start a new one.
Make it easy to reply
Finishing your query with "Please send your reply to... " makes it
quite unlikely you will get an answer. If you can't be bothered to
take even the few seconds required to set up a correct Reply-To
header in your mail agent, we can't be bothered to take even a few
seconds to think about your problem. If your mail program doesn't
permit this, get a better mail program. If your operating system
doesn't support any e-mail programs that permit this, get a better
operating system.
In Web forums, asking for a reply by e-mail is outright rude, unless
you believe the information may be sensitive (and somebody will, for
some unknown reason, let you but not the whole forum know it). If you
want an e-mail copy when somebody replies in the thread, request that
the Web forum send it; this feature is supported almost everywhere
under options like "watch this thread", "send e-mail on answers",
etc.
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, punctuate, and capitalize correctly. Don't confuse "its" with
"it's", "loose" with "lose", or "discrete" with "discreet". Don't
TYPE IN ALL CAPS; this is read as shouting and considered rude.
(All-smalls is only slightly less annoying, as it's difficult to
read. Alan Cox can get away with it, but you can't.)
More generally, if you write like a semi-literate boob you will very
likely be ignored. So don't use instant-messaging shortcuts. Spelling
"you" as "u" makes you look like a semi-literate boob to save two
entire keystrokes. Worse: 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 Internet. By writing in
English you minimize your chances that your question will be
discarded unread.
If you are writing in English but it is a second language for you, it
is good form to alert potential respondents to potential language
difficulties and options for getting around them. Examples:
* English is not my native language; please excuse typing errors.
* If you speak $LANGUAGE, please email/PM me; I may need assistance
translating my question.
* I am familiar with the technical terms, but some slang
expressions and idioms are difficult for me.
* I've posted my question in $LANGUAGE and English. I'll be glad to
translate responses, if you only use one or the other.
Send questions in accessible, standard formats
If you make your question artificially hard to read, it is more
likely to be passed over in favor of one that isn't. So:
* Send plain text mail, not HTML. (It's not hard to turn off HTML.)
* MIME attachments are usually OK, but only if they are real
content (such as an attached source file or patch), and not
merely boilerplate generated by your mail client (such as another
copy of your message).
* 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.
* However, do not wrap data (such as log file dumps or session
transcripts) at any fixed column width. Data should be included
as-is, so respondents can have confidence that they are seeing
what you saw.
* Don't send MIME Quoted-Printable encoding to an English-language
forum. This encoding can be necessary when you're posting in a
language ASCII doesn't cover, but many e-mail agents don't
support it. When they break, all those =20 glyphs scattered
through the text are ugly and distracting -- or may actively
sabotage the semantics of your text.
* Never, ever expect hackers to be able to read closed proprietary
document formats like Microsoft Word or Excel. Most hackers react
to these about as well as you would to having a pile of steaming
pig manure dumped on your doorstep. Even when they can cope, they
resent having to do so.
* If you're sending e-mail from a Windows machine, turn off
Microsoft's problematic "Smart Quotes" feature (From Tools >
AutoCorrect Options, clear the smart quotes checkbox under
AutoFormat As You Type.). This is so you'll avoid sprinkling
garbage characters through your mail.
* In Web forums, do not abuse "smiley" and "HTML" features (when
they are present). 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.
If you're using a graphical-user-interface mail client such as
Netscape Messenger, MS Outlook, or their ilk, beware that it may
violate these rules when used with its default settings. Most such
clients have a menu-based "View Source" command. Use this on
something in your sent-mail folder, verifying sending of plain text
without unnecessary attached crud.
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). Provide your vendor's distribution and
release level (e.g.: "Fedora Core 7", "Slackware 9.1", etc.).
* 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 possibly relevant recent changes in your computer or
software configuration.
* If at all possible, provide a way to reproduce the problem in a
controlled environment.
Do the best you can to anticipate the questions a hacker will ask,
and answer them in advance in your request for help.
Giving hackers the ability to reproduce the problem in a controlled
environment is especially important if you are reporting something
you think is a bug in code. When you do this, your odds of getting a
useful answer and the speed with which you are likely to get that
answer both improve tremendously.
Simon Tatham has written an excellent essay entitled How to Report
Bugs Effectively. I strongly recommend that you read it.
Volume is not precision
You need to be precise and informative. This end is not served by
simply dumping huge volumes of code or data into a help request. If
you have a large, complicated test case that is breaking a program,
try to trim it and make it as small as possible.
This is useful for at least three reasons. One: being seen to invest
effort in simplifying the question makes it more likely you'll get an
answer, Two: simplifying the question makes it more likely you'll get
a useful answer. Three: In the process of refining your bug report,
you may develop a fix or workaround yourself.
Don't rush to claim that you have found a bug
When you are having problems with a piece of software, don't claim
you have found a bug unless you are very, very sure of your ground.
Hint: unless you can provide a source-code patch that fixes the
problem, or a regression test against a previous version that
demonstrates incorrect behavior, you are probably not sure enough.
This applies to webpages and documentation, too; if you have found a
documentation "bug", you should supply replacement text and which
pages it should go on.
Remember, there are many other users that are not experiencing your
problem. Otherwise you would have learned about it while reading the
documentation and searching the Web (you did do that before
complaining, didn't you?). This means that very probably it is you
who are doing something wrong, not the software.
The people who wrote the software work very hard to make it work as
well as possible. If you claim you have found a bug, you'll be
impugning their competence, which may offend some of them even if you
are correct. It's especially undiplomatic to yell "bug" in the
Subject line.
When asking your question, it is best to write as though you assume
you are doing something wrong, even if you are privately pretty sure
you have found an actual bug. If there really is a bug, you will hear
about it in the answer. Play it so the maintainers will want to
apologize to you if the bug is real, rather than so that you will owe
them an apology if you have messed up.
Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework
Some people who get that they shouldn't behave rudely or arrogantly,
demanding an answer, retreat to the opposite extreme of grovelling. "
I know I'm just a pathetic newbie loser, but...". This is distracting
and unhelpful. It's especially annoying when it's coupled with
vagueness about the actual problem.
Don't waste your time, or ours, on crude primate politics. Instead,
present the background facts and your question as clearly as you can.
That is a better way to position yourself than by grovelling.
Sometimes Web forums have separate places for newbie questions. If
you feel you do have a newbie question, just go there. But don't
grovel there either.
Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses
It's not useful to tell hackers what you think is causing your
problem. (If your diagnostic theories were such hot stuff, would you
be consulting others for help?) So, make sure you're telling them the
raw symptoms of what goes wrong, rather than your interpretations and
theories. Let them do the interpretation and diagnosis. If you feel
it's important to state your guess, clearly label it as such and
describe why that answer isn't working for you.
Stupid:
I'm getting back-to-back SIG11 errors on kernel compiles, and
suspect a hairline crack on one of the motherboard traces. What's
the best way to check for those?
Smart:
My home-built K6/233 on an FIC-PA2007 motherboard (VIA Apollo VP2
chipset) with 256MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM starts getting frequent
SIG11 errors about 20 minutes after power-on during the course of
kernel compiles, but never in the first 20 minutes. Rebooting
doesn't restart the clock, but powering down overnight does.
Swapping out all RAM didn't help. The relevant part of a typical
compile session log follows.
Since the preceding point seems to be a tough one for many people to
grasp, here's a phrase to remind you: "All diagnosticians are from
Missouri." That US state's official motto is "Show me" (earned in
1899, when Congressman Willard D. Vandiver said "I come from a
country that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and
frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from
Missouri. You've got to show me.") In diagnosticians' case, it's not
a matter of skepticism, but rather a literal, functional need to see
whatever is as close as possible to the same raw evidence that you
see, rather than your surmises and summaries. Show us.
Describe your problem's symptoms in chronological order
The clues most useful in figuring out something that went wrong often
lie in the events immediately prior. So, your account should describe
precisely what you did, and what the machine and software did,
leading up to the blowup. In the case of command-line processes,
having a session log (e.g., using the script utility) and quoting the
relevant twenty or so lines is very useful.
If the program that blew up on you has diagnostic options (such as -v
for verbose), try to select options that will add useful debugging
information to the transcript. Remember that more is not necessarily
better; try to choose a debug level that will inform rather than
drowning the reader in junk.
If your account ends up being long (more than about four paragraphs),
it might be useful to succinctly state the problem up top, then
follow with the chronological tale. That way, hackers will know what
to watch for in reading your account.
Describe the goal, not the step
If you are trying to find out how to do something (as opposed to
reporting a bug), begin by describing the goal. Only then describe
the particular step towards it that you are blocked on.
Often, people who need technical help have a high-level goal in mind
and get stuck on what they think is one particular path towards the
goal. They come for help with the step, but don't realize that the
path is wrong. It can take substantial effort to get past this.
Stupid:
How do I get the color-picker on the FooDraw program to take a
hexadecimal RGB value?
Smart:
I'm trying to replace the color table on an image with values of
my choosing. Right now the only way I can see to do this is by
editing each table slot, but I can't get FooDraw's color picker
to take a hexadecimal RGB value.
The second version of the question is smart. It allows an answer that
suggests a tool better suited to the task.
Don't ask people to reply by private e-mail
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, helpers 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 or she does, it's usually because he
or she thinks the question is too ill-formed or obvious 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 many answers that are all
closely similar, then the magic words are "e-mail me and I'll
summarize 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 summarize.
Be explicit about your question
Open-ended questions tend to be perceived as open-ended time sinks.
Those people most likely to be able to give you a useful answer are
also the busiest people (if only because they take on the most work
themselves). People like that are allergic to open-ended time sinks,
thus they tend to be allergic to open-ended questions.
You are more likely to get a useful response if you are explicit
about what you want respondents to do (provide pointers, send code,
check your patch, whatever). This will focus their effort and
implicitly put an upper bound on the time and energy a respondent
must allocate to helping you. This is good.
To understand the world the experts live in, think of expertise as an
abundant resource and time to respond as a scarce one. The less of a
time commitment you implicitly ask for, the more likely you are to
get an answer from someone really good and really busy.
So it is useful to frame your question to minimize the time
commitment required for an expert to field it -- but this is often not
the same thing as simplifying the question. Thus, for example, "Would
you give me a pointer to a good explanation of X?" is usually a
smarter question than "Would you explain X, please?". If you have
some malfunctioning code, it is usually smarter to ask for someone to
explain what's wrong with it than it is to ask someone to fix it.
When asking about code
Don't ask others to debug your broken code without giving a hint what
sort of problem they should be searching for. Posting a few hundred
lines of code, saying "it doesn't work", will get you ignored.
Posting a dozen lines of code, saying "after line 7 I was expecting
to see , but occurred instead" is much more likely to get you
a response.
The most effective way to be precise about a code problem is to
provide a minimal bug-demonstrating test case. What's a minimal test
case? It's an illustration of the problem; just enough code to
exhibit the undesirable behavior and no more. How do you make a
minimal test case? If you know what line or section of code is
producing the problematic behavior, make a copy of it and add just
enough supporting code to produce a complete example (i.e. enough
that the source is acceptable to the compiler/interpreter/whatever
application processes it). If you can't narrow it down to a
particular section, make a copy of the source and start removing
chunks that don't affect the problematic behavior. The smaller your
minimal test case is, the better (see the section called "Volume is
not precision").
Generating a really small minimal test case will not always be
possible, but trying to is good discipline. It may help you learn
what you need to solve the problem on your own -- and even when it
doesn't, hackers like to see that you have tried. It will make them
more cooperative.
If you simply want a code review, say as much up front, and be sure
to mention what areas you think might particularly need review and
why.
Don't post homework questions
Hackers are good at spotting homework questions; most of us have done
them ourselves. Those questions are for you to work out, so that you
will learn from the experience. It is OK to ask for hints, but not
for entire solutions.
If you suspect you have been passed a homework question, but can't
solve it anyway, try asking in a user group forum or (as a last
resort) in a "user" list/forum of a project. While the hackers will
spot it, some of the advanced users may at least give you a hint.
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."
In general, asking yes-or-no questions is a good thing to avoid
unless you want a yes-or-no answer.
Don't flag your question as "Urgent", even if it is for you
That's your problem, not ours. Claiming urgency is very likely to be
counter-productive: most hackers will simply delete such messages as
rude and selfish attempts to elicit immediate and special attention.
Furthermore, the word 'Urgent' (and other similar attempts to grab
attention in the subject line) often triggers spam filters - your
intended recipients might never see it at all!
There is one semi-exception. It can be worth mentioning if you're
using the program in some high-profile place, one that the hackers
will get excited about; in such a case, if you're under time
pressure, and you say so politely, people may get interested enough
to answer faster.
This is a very risky thing to do, however, because the hackers'
metric for what is exciting probably differs from yours. Posting from
the International Space Station would qualify, for example, but
posting on behalf of a feel-good charitable or political cause would
almost certainly not. In fact, posting "Urgent: Help me save the
fuzzy baby seals!" will reliably get you shunned or flamed even by
hackers who think fuzzy baby seals are important.
If you find this mysterious, re-read the rest of this how-to
repeatedly until you understand it before posting anything at all.
Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Be courteous. Use "Please" and "Thanks for your attention" or "Thanks
for your consideration". Make it clear 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.
(We must note that the only serious objection we've received from
veteran hackers to this HOWTO is with respect to our previous
recommendation to use "Thanks in advance". Some hackers feel this
connotes an intention not to thank anybody afterwards. Our
recommendation is to either say "Thanks in advance" first and thank
respondents afterwards, or express courtesy in a different way, such
as by saying "Thanks for your attention" or "Thanks for your
consideration".)
Follow up with a brief note on the solution
Send a note after the problem has been solved to all who helped you;
let them know how it came out and thank them again for their help. If
the problem attracted general interest in a mailing list or
newsgroup, it's appropriate to post the followup there.
Optimally, the reply should be to the thread started by the original
question posting, and should have 'FIXED', 'RESOLVED' or an equally
obvious tag in the subject line. On mailing lists with fast
turnaround, a potential respondent who sees a thread about "Problem X
" ending with "Problem X - FIXED" knows not to waste his/her time
even reading the thread (unless (s)he personally finds Problem X
interesting) and can therefore use that time solving a different
problem.
Your followup doesn't have to be long and involved; a simple "Howdy --
it was a failed network cable! Thanks, everyone. - Bill" would be
better than nothing. In fact, a short and sweet summary is better
than a long dissertation unless the solution has real technical
depth. Say what action solved the problem, but you need not replay
the whole troubleshooting sequence.
For problems with some depth, it is appropriate to post a summary of
the troubleshooting history. Describe your final problem statement.
Describe what worked as a solution, and indicate avoidable blind
alleys after that. The blind alleys should come after the correct
solution and other summary material, rather than turning the
follow-up into a detective story. Name the names of people who helped
you; you'll make friends that way.
Besides being courteous and informative, this sort of followup will
help others searching the archive of the mailing-list/newsgroup/forum
to know exactly which solution helped you and thus may also help
them.
Last, and not least, this sort of followup helps everybody who
assisted feel a satisfying sense of closure about the problem. If you
are not a techie or hacker yourself, trust us that this feeling is
very important to the gurus and experts you tapped for help. Problem
narratives that trail off into unresolved nothingness are frustrating
things; hackers itch to see them resolved. The goodwill that
scratching that itch earns you will be very, very helpful to you next
time you need to pose a question.
Consider how you might be able to prevent others from having the same
problem in the future. Ask yourself if a documentation or FAQ patch
would help, and if the answer is yes send that patch to the
maintainer.
Among hackers, this sort of good followup behavior is actually more
important than conventional politeness. It's how you get a reputation
for playing well with others, which can be a very valuable asset.
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
Fucking Manual. He or she 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 Fucking
Web. He or she is almost certainly right. Go search it. (The milder
version of this is when you are told "Google is your friend!")
In Web forums, you may also be told to search the forum archives. In
fact, someone may even be so kind as to provide a pointer to the
previous thread where this problem was solved. But do not rely on
this consideration; do your archive-searching before asking.
Often, the person telling you to do a search has the manual or the
web page with the information you need open, and is looking at it as
he or she types. These replies mean that the responder 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, your
respondent is showing you a rough kind of respect simply by not
ignoring you. You should instead be thankful for this 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. Then, if you still 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 followup
question: "What's a zentry?" Here's a good followup 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?"
Dealing with rudeness
Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to
give offense. Rather, it's the product of the direct,
cut-through-the-bullshit 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 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 misbehavior 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 flamewar 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 with our eccentricities if you think of us as being
brain-damaged. Go right ahead. We won't care; we like being whatever
it is we are, and generally have a healthy skepticism about clinical
labels.)
Jeff Bigler's observations about tact filters are also relevant and
worth reading.
In the next section, we'll talk about a different issue; the kind of
"rudeness" you'll see when you misbehave.
On Not Reacting Like A Loser
Odds are you'll screw up a few times on hacker community forums -- in
ways detailed in this article, or similar. And you'll be told exactly
how you screwed up, possibly with colourful asides. In public.
When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the
experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies,
scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's
employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you
do:
Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and appropriate.
Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by
people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that
all criticism should have been conveyed via private e-mail: That's
not how it works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally
insulted when someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or
that his views differ. Those are loser attitudes.
There have been hacker forums where, out of some misguided sense of
hyper-courtesy, participants are banned from posting any
fault-finding with another's posts, and told "Don't say anything if
you're unwilling to help the user." The resulting departure of
clueful participants to elsewhere causes them to descend into
meaningless babble and become useless as technical forums.
Exaggeratedly "friendly" (in that fashion) or useful: Pick one.
Remember: When that hacker tells you that you've screwed up, and (no
matter how gruffly) tells you not to do it again, he's acting out of
concern for (1) you and (2) his community. It would be much easier
for him to ignore you and filter you out of his life. If you can't
manage to be grateful, at least have a little dignity, don't whine,
and don't expect to be treated like a fragile doll just because
you're a newcomer with a theatrically hypersensitive soul and
delusions of entitlement.
Sometimes people will attack you personally, flame without an
apparent reason, etc., even if you don't screw up (or have only
screwed up in their imagination). In this case, complaining is the
way to really screw up.
These flamers are either lamers who don't have a clue but believe
themselves to be experts, or would-be psychologists testing whether
you'll screw up. The other readers either ignore them, or find ways
to deal with them on their own. The flamers' behavior creates
problems for themselves, which don't have to concern you.
Don't let yourself be drawn into a flamewar, either. Most flames are
best ignored -- after you've checked whether they are really flames,
not pointers to the ways in which you have screwed up, and not
cleverly ciphered answers to your real question (this happens as
well).
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 or resource X?
Q: How can I use X to do Y?
Q: How can I configure my shell prompt?
Q: Can I convert an AcmeCorp document into a TeX file using the
Bass-o-matic file converter?
Q: My {program, configuration, SQL statement} doesn't work
Q: I'm having problems with my Windows machine. Can you help?
Q: My program doesn't work. I think system facility X is broken.
Q: I'm having problems installing Linux or X. Can you help?
Q: How can I crack root/steal channel-ops privileges/read someone's
e-mail?
Q: Where can I find program or resource 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: How can I use X to do Y?
A: If what you want is to do Y, you should ask that question without
pre-supposing the use of a method that may not be appropriate.
Questions of this form often indicate a person who is not merely
ignorant about X, but confused about what problem Y they are
solving and too fixated on the details of their particular
situation. It is generally best to ignore such people until they
define their problem better.
Q: How can I configure my shell prompt?
A: If you're smart enough to ask this question, you're smart enough
to RTFM and find out yourself.
Q: Can I convert an AcmeCorp document into a TeX file using the
Bass-o-matic file converter?
A: Try it and see. If you did that, you'd (a) learn the answer, and
(b) stop wasting my time.
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 an open-source
operating system like Linux or BSD.
Note: you can ask questions related to Windows machines if they
are about a program that does have an official Windows build, or
interacts with Windows machines (i.e., Samba). Just don't be
surprised by the reply that the problem is with Windows and not
the program, because Windows is so broken in general that this is
very often the case.
Q: My program doesn't work. I think system facility X is broken.
A: While it is possible that you are the first person to notice an
obvious deficiency in system calls and libraries heavily used by
hundreds or thousands of people, it is rather more likely that you
are utterly clueless. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence; when you make a claim like this one, you must back it up
with clear and exhaustive documentation of the failure case.
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.)
Note: questions about installing Linux may be appropriate if
you're on a forum or mailing list about a particular distribution,
and the problem is with that distro; or on local user groups
forums. In this case, be sure to describe the exact details of the
failure. But do careful searching first, with "linux" and all
suspicious pieces of hardware.
Q: How can I crack root/steal channel-ops privileges/read someone's
e-mail?
A: You're a lowlife for wanting to do such things and a moron for
asking a hacker to help you.
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. Can I get a pointer to programming
information on this device?
This one has already STFWed, and sounds like there might be a
real problem.
Stupid: I can't get the code from project foo to compile. Why is it
broken?
The querent assumes that somebody else screwed up. Arrogant
git...
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
Nulix-related problems. Here's a transcript of my compilation
attempt; is it something I did?
The querent has specified the environment, read the FAQ, is
showing the error, and is not assuming his problems are someone
else's fault. This one 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 Athlon 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/she
has exhibited problem-solving intelligence rather than passively
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 linux-kernel mailing
list (lkml). I (Eric) was the one asking the question that time. I
was seeing mysterious lockups on a Tyan S2462 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.
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 instruction to others led directly to the
composition of this guide.
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. Have patience: the person with your
answer may be in a different time-zone and asleep. Or it may be that
your question wasn't well-formed to begin with.
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. 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 would 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 to always come for free.
For popular software like Linux, there are at least 10,000 users per
developer. It's just not possible for one person to handle the
support calls from over 10,000 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 (and support for closed-source software is
usually more expensive and less competent than support for
open-source software).
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way
Be gentle. Problem-related stress can make people seem rude or stupid
even when they're not.
Reply to a first offender off-line. There is no need of public
humiliation for someone who may have made an honest mistake. A real
newbie may not know how to search archives or where the FAQ is stored
or posted.
If you don't know for sure, say so! A wrong but
authoritative-sounding answer is worse than none at all. Don't point
anyone down a wrong path simply because it's fun to sound like an
expert. Be humble and honest; set a good example for both the querent
and your peers.
If you can't help, don't hinder. Don't make jokes about procedures
that could trash the user's setup -- the poor sap might interpret
these as instructions.
Ask probing questions to elicit more details. If you're good at this,
the querent will learn something -- and so might you. Try to turn the
bad question into a good one; remember we were all newbies once.
While muttering RTFM is sometimes justified when replying to someone
who is just a lazy slob, a pointer to documentation (even if it's
just a suggestion to google for a key phrase) is better.
If you're going to answer the question at all, give good value. Don't
suggest kludgy workarounds when somebody is using the wrong tool or
approach. Suggest good tools. Reframe the question.
Answer the actual question! If the querent has been so thorough as to
do his or her research and has included in the query that X, Y, Z, A,
B, and C have already been tried without good result, it is supremely
unhelpful to respond with "Try A or B," or with a link to something
that only says, "Try X, Y, Z, A, B, or C.".
Help your community learn from the question. When you field a good
question, ask yourself "How would the relevant documentation or FAQ
have to change so that nobody has to answer this again?" Then send a
patch to the document maintainer.
If you did research to answer the question, demonstrate your skills
rather than writing as though you pulled the answer out of your butt.
Answering one good question is like feeding a hungry person one meal,
but teaching them research skills by example is showing them how to
grow food for a lifetime.
Related Resources
If you need instruction in the basics of how personal computers,
Unix, and the Internet work, see The Unix and Internet Fundamentals
HOWTO.
When you release software or write patches for software, try to
follow the guidelines in the Software Release Practice HOWTO.
Acknowledgements
Evelyn Mitchell contributed some example stupid questions and
inspired the "How To Give A Good Answer" section. Mikhail Ramendik
contributed some particularly valuable suggestions for improvements.