Before you start reading. You have been guided to this thread, to make you a better 'poster' which is informative and understandable.
- Before you ask.
- Be particular about your thread.
- Try and find your answer, by searching the archives of the forum you plan to post a thread in.
- Try and find your answer, by searching the Internet (google).
- Try and find your answer, by reading the manual.
- Try and find your answer, by reading the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).
- Try and find your answer, by experimentation.
- Try and find your answer, by asking a skilled/professional friend.
- If you are a programmer, try and find your answer, by reading the source code.
- If all items above, doesn't solve your problem(s), then read on.
- 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 forums.
- Don't waste it on babble like "Please, help me"
- Don't try to impress us with the depth of your pain, use the space for problem description instead.
- Stupid:
- Help, script doesn't work, help plz.
- Smart:
- Bot script, on text, doesn't react, I'm added as user, pasted necessary information below.
- The Script does A, but should do B. - You have to be precise and informative, and that is not served by dumping over 200 lines of code.
- If you have a large source code, try and trim it, to make it as small as possible.
- 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 <x>,
but <y> occurred instead" is much more likely to get you a response.
- Posting small pieces of code, where half is missing, might not be answered, cause a debug is impossible.
- Don't expect that everything is made for you, even if you have followed these fine guide lines.
- Don't expect help will arrive instantly.
- Don't expect that they only are here for you.
- Don't expect that the universe circulate around you.
On the other hand:
- Expect a fine voluntary piece of work, for free.
- Expect that some users spend their spare time for you, when they have the time.
- 1)
- Before asking in an e-mail, newsgroup or forum.
- When you ask, find the right forum for you're question
Be sensitive when you ask, consequences are that you might be ignored or treated like a loser, if you:
Use a meaningful, specific subject header.
On forums, the subject header is your golden opportunity to attract qualified users.
- In some forums when a thread is solved, they add [solved] or similar in the header,
so others know that the thread doesn't need attention.
- Size is not precision
- When asking about code.
- Something to think about, when writing your thread.
Is the work not paid, then:
Some of the text have been translated (twice), from a site I stumbled over. http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questio ... disclaimer
Some were added later.
Do you have suggestions/corrections to this list, please mail me on "Christian 'A' sp00fed.dk"