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How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

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Wordzilla:
I was writing an introduction to DC search when I came across this very well written guide.

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.
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EDIT: add link to the guide

Wordzilla:
Another (similar) nice read: How to Report Bugs Effectively

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

lanux128:
there used to be a site that gave such advices in a not so subtle way. :)
• http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_It_You_Moron

Wordzilla:
Too bad the Google It You Moron site is sold, here's a cached version of their homepage from Internet Archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050801233028/http://www.googleityoumoron.com/

f0dder:
Imho having to follow an exhausting list before asking something is a bit taxing - I don't mind helping people if they show they've put at least a little effort into the subject. On the other hand, some people are way too lazy, on the asmcommunity board we often get people who want homework help, or have been doing nothing whatsoever doing a whole semester, then suddenly realize they need to pass an exam... :)

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