Asking a Question
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Professor Irwin Cory would give long and contradictory answers to profound
questions and was the master of obfuscation.
In asking questions and in answering questions we want to provide as much
information about a problem or solution as is needed.
In providing answers sometimes it is best to be a little short on a complete
soution forcing the person who asks the question to learn the solution better.
On the other hand if something is entirely new you can pick up bad habits
without any idea of what might be better. So myself I tend to answer
a question with more than a usuable answer and anticipate the additional
question. I frequently include information
that I am almost certain would already be known to the questioner for the
benefit of others who obtain information from the
Google Usenet Archives.
In asking a question the last thing we want to do
is to ask a contradictory question like Professor Irwin Cory.
I tried to start a thread once on how to ask an
understandable question, without references to
what makes a bad question. Which makes this even more difficult,
but as I think up things that might contribute to straight forward questions
I will add them here. Any and all contributions welcome.
More Questions than Answers
Posted in misc on June 7, 2001
You can check out some things on one of my pages
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/exec/posting
or on Chip Pearson's site
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/newposte.htm
but they really don't get into exactly what is needed for
a meaningful question. Things that annoy people are
covered to some extent -- you can't list everything.
But "How to Ask a Meaningful Question" would be
much better. It's easier to spot what doesn't make
a meaningful question.
I will start out with being able to answer a "simple"
question like
1) What does it do instead of work? -- but then that
is a question.
You see I can't even tell if
What Makes a Meaningful Question ?
What Makes for a Meaningful Question ?
are the same or are two entirely different questions.
How to Ask a Question
Try to ask a question such that the person responding will not have
to ask for more information. You might be able to work shorter
back and forth conversation into actual face to face conversation, but
when there will be a delay of several hours or days to continue a conversation
it would be to your advantage to state exactly what you want the first time.
- Be direct, ask exactly what you need, what you want when asking
for a solution.
- If you have a problem consider the Who, Where, Why, How, How Much
aspects of the problem so that the person answering will already know
what you know. Not much will be obvious to a responder so do not
assume that they will know what you mean.
- If you get an error message it is important to provide the exact text
of a message, because that is what a responder will probably have to search
for on your behalf. Do not post a picture of the error message, because
it is a waste of everybody's time and resources and it cannot be searched on.
-
How NOT to answer a question
It is very difficult as I already mentioned to provide positive only
guidelines in how to ask or how to answer a question. Since
it is the negative aspects that people tend to use to address the positive.
Here are some links, but they are all negative aspects that you are expected
to learn how to do it right by not doing something.
How to Ask a question
Since writing my page I have found a page close to what I was originally trying to find. You will
find some additional related links on my Posting page (Netiquette) but this one
really fits in with this page's topic of how to ask a question.
- Making Effective Newsgroup Posts, L Chapelle Microsoft MVP-DTS (MVP-L). I like this one because the emphasis
is how to post somethine effective in order to get the answers you need rather
than examining negative things from a Don't do this viewpoint.
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