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Use the following guidelines when posting questions to a professional forum or newsgroup:
Before asking
- Search the archives/FAQ before you post. Most forums and newsgroups have some sort of online FAQ (FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions) or archives. You should always perform a search on these resources before asking your "very important and unique" question. Many questions have already been answered, there is no point in answering them again, and some communities have members who will flame you for not doing so before asking. Another good idea is to do a keyword search for words relating to your question on the archives before you post.
- Use online search engines such as MSN Search, Google, Yahoo! or other search engines. Post the message you're getting on your preferred search engine and see what you come up with. Let us know what you found, especially if your problem is identical or similar to your findings.
- Look for an answer in the manual, documentation or readme file and tell us about it.
- Ask a skilled friend, but don't take their advice for granted. Many troubleshooting scenarios just got worse because "my friend told me to xxxxxxxx and"...
The title of your question
Although it might seem silly for some, selecting a good title for the question/thread will be the one of the main driving forces for others to want to actually read your item. Choosing a badly-formatted title will drive people away, thinking that since the title is so badly written, so must be the information and the question within the thread. For example:
"PLEASE HELP, I NEED HELP N O W !!!"
is an example for a really bad selection of a title for your question. People don't like to waste time trying to help people that don't seem to be able to help themselves, or at least not being able to correctly describe their problem. Titles like these are likely to be filtered by reflex.
On the other hand. a short, informative title like this one:
"Discovery knocking from rear on overrun"
will actually bring people in. Skilled members can tell, at a glance, what problem you're having, on what vehicle, and perhaps even the reason for your problem. The ones that know the answer will gladly try to help, and those that do not know will gladly enter because they would like to find what the answer is for their own benefit.
The question
Know how to ask the question, and provide all the necessary information in your initial post. For example, a question like:
"Please help me, why dont the brakes work!!! I must repair this ASAP,
will someone help me?"
will also receive the same sort of answers that this article tries to teach you how to avoid, or no answers at all. And if someone did want to try to answer, they'd need to ask for more information, which in turn will cause you to come back and explain yourself, thus lengthening the answering process.
Good examples of questions will include information from most of the following categories:
- What are you trying to do?
- Why are you trying to do it?
- What did you try already, why, and what was the result of your actions?
- How long have you been experiencing this problem?
- Have you searched the relevant forum/newsgroup archives?
- Have you searched for any other resources?
- Have you recently installed or uninstalled any equipment or modified anything?
- What changes were made to the vehicle between the time everything last worked and when you noticed the problem?
Don't let us assume, tell us right at the beginning.
Some technical information we need to have :
- What Vehicle have you got?
- What Model have you got?
- What year is the vehicle.
- What engine has the vehicle.)
- Any other information you think we might need in order to help you.
- Do not make us ask you clarification questions, and do not make us point you back to the manual or readme file, or ask you to search the forum or by using search engines such as Google, MSN Search or Yahoo!. The more relevant info you provide, the more likely it is that your problem can be resolved quickly. Help us help you.
If you chose not to provide us with the relevant information you're just making it more difficult for us to provide you with good answers in a timely fashion. If you don't care enough about your own problem, it will be much harder for us to care enough about it to help you. Don't be surprised if people are less enthusiastic about helping you under such conditions.
- Tell what you have done prior to asking your question. This will help us understand that you've done so far. Add information about the steps you took so far towards what you think might be the solution to your problem, related articles you found, relevant search results you found when searching the web and any other information you've gathered from various sources. Most active forum/newsgroups members like to help those who they think are doing a better job in trying to help themselves. They tend to ignore or give laconic answers to those who, in their opinion, are not doing their own research, and seem to be to lazy to do the work themselves.
- Write in a clear language, avoiding spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Don't type IN ALL CAPS, which in most cases is read as shouting and considered rude. Try to express yourself in a clear language, and by all means - do try to use punctuation marks in the right place.
Follow-up
Follow up with a brief note on the solution. If one of the answers helped you, we would all like to know which one it was, and what you did to finally solve your problem. This is what an online community is all about - sharing information . Sharing information is not just by taking information from us, but also by sharing your success and failure stories, and by helping others who might read your post in the future understand what was the outcome of the thread. Consider how you might be able to prevent others from having the same problem in the future.
Also, saying "Thank you" and letting people understand that you care about their time and effort is a good way of getting noticed. However, saying "Thank you in advance" is not, and most people feel bad about it because they read it as "I have a very urgent question I want you to help me with, but I don't really have the time to come back and personally thank you, because it's MY time I care about, not yours"...
Before asking
- Search the archives/FAQ before you post. Most forums and newsgroups have some sort of online FAQ (FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions) or archives. You should always perform a search on these resources before asking your "very important and unique" question. Many questions have already been answered, there is no point in answering them again, and some communities have members who will flame you for not doing so before asking. Another good idea is to do a keyword search for words relating to your question on the archives before you post.
- Use online search engines such as MSN Search, Google, Yahoo! or other search engines. Post the message you're getting on your preferred search engine and see what you come up with. Let us know what you found, especially if your problem is identical or similar to your findings.
- Look for an answer in the manual, documentation or readme file and tell us about it.
- Ask a skilled friend, but don't take their advice for granted. Many troubleshooting scenarios just got worse because "my friend told me to xxxxxxxx and"...
The title of your question
Although it might seem silly for some, selecting a good title for the question/thread will be the one of the main driving forces for others to want to actually read your item. Choosing a badly-formatted title will drive people away, thinking that since the title is so badly written, so must be the information and the question within the thread. For example:
"PLEASE HELP, I NEED HELP N O W !!!"
is an example for a really bad selection of a title for your question. People don't like to waste time trying to help people that don't seem to be able to help themselves, or at least not being able to correctly describe their problem. Titles like these are likely to be filtered by reflex.
On the other hand. a short, informative title like this one:
"Discovery knocking from rear on overrun"
will actually bring people in. Skilled members can tell, at a glance, what problem you're having, on what vehicle, and perhaps even the reason for your problem. The ones that know the answer will gladly try to help, and those that do not know will gladly enter because they would like to find what the answer is for their own benefit.
The question
Know how to ask the question, and provide all the necessary information in your initial post. For example, a question like:
"Please help me, why dont the brakes work!!! I must repair this ASAP,
will someone help me?"
will also receive the same sort of answers that this article tries to teach you how to avoid, or no answers at all. And if someone did want to try to answer, they'd need to ask for more information, which in turn will cause you to come back and explain yourself, thus lengthening the answering process.
Good examples of questions will include information from most of the following categories:
- What are you trying to do?
- Why are you trying to do it?
- What did you try already, why, and what was the result of your actions?
- How long have you been experiencing this problem?
- Have you searched the relevant forum/newsgroup archives?
- Have you searched for any other resources?
- Have you recently installed or uninstalled any equipment or modified anything?
- What changes were made to the vehicle between the time everything last worked and when you noticed the problem?
Don't let us assume, tell us right at the beginning.
Some technical information we need to have :
- What Vehicle have you got?
- What Model have you got?
- What year is the vehicle.
- What engine has the vehicle.)
- Any other information you think we might need in order to help you.
- Do not make us ask you clarification questions, and do not make us point you back to the manual or readme file, or ask you to search the forum or by using search engines such as Google, MSN Search or Yahoo!. The more relevant info you provide, the more likely it is that your problem can be resolved quickly. Help us help you.
If you chose not to provide us with the relevant information you're just making it more difficult for us to provide you with good answers in a timely fashion. If you don't care enough about your own problem, it will be much harder for us to care enough about it to help you. Don't be surprised if people are less enthusiastic about helping you under such conditions.
- Tell what you have done prior to asking your question. This will help us understand that you've done so far. Add information about the steps you took so far towards what you think might be the solution to your problem, related articles you found, relevant search results you found when searching the web and any other information you've gathered from various sources. Most active forum/newsgroups members like to help those who they think are doing a better job in trying to help themselves. They tend to ignore or give laconic answers to those who, in their opinion, are not doing their own research, and seem to be to lazy to do the work themselves.
- Write in a clear language, avoiding spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Don't type IN ALL CAPS, which in most cases is read as shouting and considered rude. Try to express yourself in a clear language, and by all means - do try to use punctuation marks in the right place.
Follow-up
Follow up with a brief note on the solution. If one of the answers helped you, we would all like to know which one it was, and what you did to finally solve your problem. This is what an online community is all about - sharing information . Sharing information is not just by taking information from us, but also by sharing your success and failure stories, and by helping others who might read your post in the future understand what was the outcome of the thread. Consider how you might be able to prevent others from having the same problem in the future.
Also, saying "Thank you" and letting people understand that you care about their time and effort is a good way of getting noticed. However, saying "Thank you in advance" is not, and most people feel bad about it because they read it as "I have a very urgent question I want you to help me with, but I don't really have the time to come back and personally thank you, because it's MY time I care about, not yours"...
