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.

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.

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