How to Ask Questions
27 Jan 2022Why Do Smart Question Matter?
Sometimes people have issues solving problems and need a helping hand. This isn’t something to be ashamed of, since most people need help from time to time and there are many people who are willing to offer that help. However, most people don’t think about the type of questions they are asking. A skill that often eludes most people is the ability to ask smart questions. They don’t realize it, but asking questions in the wrong way is a quick way to get someone annoyed. Asking for pointers or asking about a specific problem is usually fine, but sometimes people take advantage of others and rely on them to do everything for them. A person being smart with their questions will be able to do their own research first, and then be able to communicate all information that could be relevant. After all, not everyone has the free time to perform google searches for others or play a game of twenty questions. They also don’t have time to go through every piece of code written for a problem, especially if the code is extremely long. This is especially true of people such as software developers, who often need to spend a large amount of time working on their own projects. A simple, easy question can waste time they could be spending solving more urgent problems. And a poorly communicated question can cause frustration, since it may be an urgent issue that a developer can solve, but they’ll waste time asking for more details to be able to identify the cause of the problem, time better spent interacting with someone who both knows enough and is willing to contribute to the solution to the problem.
Smart Questions Receive Smart Answers
If a question is communicated in a smart and relevant way, they are more likely to be answered. For example, this problem was submitted to Stack Overflow. The problem was a Linux command line problem. The user wanted a grep command that would search their system for files that contain a specific string. They then clarify that what they want is to find a string in a file, and not a file name. They then add a command that they found from a search, which they said came up twice. They then said that instead of finding the files that contain the string, the command returns every file in the system. They finish by asking if they are close, or if there is another way. This question has many attributes of a smart question. First, they establish that they have looked for a solution. This means that the problem is either new, or hard to find a correct answer for, and that it isn’t a waste of time to answer. Next, they give their solution, and what it did vs. what it was supposed to do. This shows developers that they actually tried their solution, and gives them an idea of what they want and what went wrong. Finally, they kept the question to relevant information. They didn’t spend time talking about something unrelated, they didn’t waste space begging for help or demanding that someone do their work, they just made a request for assistance. As such, they received a large amount of assistance. The assistance is very informative, from modifying the specific command given to a rundown of grep commands, to alternative solutions to the problem. The people answering the questions do so in a polite way, never telling the person asking the question to do more research or to stop wasting their time. The user asked a smart question, and they got several smart answers in return.
What Happens When a Question Isn’t Smart?
When a smart question is asked, a smart answer is received. However, what happens when the question isn’t smart. This question asks a question about a script for a website. They have an ad that is displayed on a webpage, and they wish to add a button that allows the user to close the ad and continue as a free user. The button makes the ad open an example page in a new tab, and then the ad and button disappear. The only code included is the html script to display the ad. This question has many issues with the standard for smart questions. The first is that the question asks about a feature that is not user friendly, which is forced ads that open new tabs. Doing so makes people reluctant to answer the question, as a couple of responses point out. The second is that the issue can be solved by searching for the answer, as an answer recommends they do. Links to pages that give advice about opening new tabs and opening URLs are provided in the answer, which proves that this isn’t a new issue. The main issue that most of the responses have is that while they added the html script, they did not include the script for the ad itself, and thus they do not know how to modify it. A few ideas are given, but most of the responses state that they can’t do more without the script, and there’s no indication if any of the proposed solutions solved the problem. The issue with asking people for help with a problem is that they need information to provide help. Since this person didn’t provide any more information, they couldn’t get any concrete help. A smart question involves proper communication, proper research, and a topic that people want answered, all of which this question doesn’t have.
What Can Be Gained from Reading Smart Questions?
While looking for examples of smart and not so smart answers, a couple of things became apparent to me. The first is that many people like to user forums such as Stack Overflow to do their work for them. Many of the lower quality questions involve asking someone to find an answer that can be easily searched for or asking someone to do an assignment that they have, whether it be homework or a job. People often think that they are entitled to the answers they seek, not caring about the time and effort of others that go into these responses. Another thing I noticed is that many people don’t really know what they want to ask. When they encounter a problem, they often aren’t able to ask for specific help, just asking “fix my code” or a general “what’s wrong with this.” People don’t realize that making others find the problem for you is often as annoying to the developers as the problem itself. I personally find describing an issue difficult at times, but I usually at least know what the problem is. A final thing I never really put a lot of thought into until now is something I brought up several times, the interaction with other developers. We take it for granted, but the people answering the questions have problems of their own. They aren’t obligated to answer them, yet do so anyway. As such, we should at least show them some courtesy. Sites like Stack Overflow are a community, and communities are all about how people interact with each other.