DISCUSSION: How To Ask a Question
 

This thread is to discuss the article titled: How To Ask a Question

ups. wrong window..

My answer'll be short. Good article. Valid. A great thing to do would be to redirect there from the registration page (and have a checkbox to click confirming you've read it - and then a popup asking again...). That'd give first-timers an idea of how to get an answer...

It's a good idea, but..... When you go to create a thread, there is a link to "Has this been asked before?". The idea is that you can see if the answer is already out there. How many click it? How many read the Rules before clicking "I agree"?

Basically, we can put all the info in front of people and they will still ignore it.

But thanks for the review :)

I know its difficult to get people to actually think on their own sometimes. Perhaps there's another way, as I think this is a good, succinct article. Perhaps a permanently visible sticky in most forums...


and, arrr! Me be talkin' like pirate on the morrow, laddies!

Well, we have been discussing wiring people's keyboards to the mains. Obviously, we'd only use this power for good - or when we felt like it :D

Seriously though, probably the only good way to get questions asked correctly is by education. LAs like this one and reinforcement through the boards - if we all aim to ask only "good questions", eventually that will become the norm and then new people will follow suit.

And, arrrr, Oi'll be talking like a pirate meself, me laddie-boy

It may be that after 10 posts, you still haven't found an answer. Instead of posting this, it would be a good idea to read back over the posts and see if you can work out why it is that no one can answer you. ...

I found it repeatedly frustrating, that perfectly sound advice (not mine ;)) wasn't acted upon (or the results / failures not reported back). That is particularly annoying if the earlier suggestions are steps in a whole procedure to be tried out for finding a solution and only 15 posts later the original poster grudgingly deigns to test a suggestion already three days old and a lot of effort of other people wasted.

So in my opinion it can't be stressed enough that all suggestions for a remedy deserve a prompt reaction by the owner of the thread, like "I tested xyz and now the error is..." or "It worked okay, thanks".

Absolutely agree with you (even I'm doing it :)) It's all about being polite, really. If someone has taken the time to offer help, the very least you can do is post back with the result. It's all about us being a community and we are only strong if we act that way.

The question has gone astray
 

I sent the following question. I can' t see the question and the answer. Where has it gone?

--------------------------------------------------------

Now I can't open the Linux. It opens the root. It asked me to write
the login name and password and accepts what I write.

So I can log in to the root and do everything. I can't open the real
Linux. It worked before. After a crash, I got this problem.

All the root commands work fine. For example, ls , cd.. , du , df etc.

I wrote just linux at the root. No, it didn't work. Could you help me to
solve the problem?

I have Mandrake Linux 10.0 version. It worked very well for more
than six months. Today, after a crash, things have gone to hell.

The question has gone astray
 

First of all I am new to Linux. I have a smattering of knowledge about things in Linux.

When I start my computer I have a choice to go either to Windows 2000 Professional version or Mandrake Linux.

When I select Mandrake Linux, I get Mandrake Linux. Then I go to Interenet, collect my email, write letters using the Open Office Program, etc.

Recently I had a small crash, after this crash I cannot get into the Linux. I just come to the root. The following is the current problem in stepwise.

1) It asked the login name -> I write the login name and press enter.
2) It asked the password -> I write the password and press enter.

3)Then I come to the the following root:

4)[alfento@digicam rchtr] $

5) The above is the root, to the best of my knowledge of Linux.

6) When I issue basic commands like ls, du ,df etc works fine. So I am in the root.

7) I gave the command 'kde' , it does not work.

8) I gave the command 'Linux' command, it didn't work.

9) When I gave the command 'vi' , it worked and I got the text editing program.

10) When I gave ' Alt + F8 ' command, I want it to give me the KDE. No it didn't work.

11) Ctrl + Alt + Del command works fine and it restarts the computer.

How I can get in to my Linux? I just come to the above mentioned (4).

It has been working for more than 6 months. After the crash yesterday, I am in trouble.

Konch, this thread is expressly to discuss the LinuxAnswer "How to ask a question". You should add your posts to your own thread since your questions have nothing to do with the how to.

add about rating thread and solved_ keyword in tile
 

Hi, maybe editing is possible where it says
"Please don't just vanish or walk away without saying Thanks"

a suggestion for addition:

- rephrase title of thread if it can be more explicit now that you have solved your problem
(edit your first entry of the thread)
- feedback on where the error /problem came from in the first place (if known)
(add to the thread)
- rate the Thread: go to menu, very end of page, center of page
- add solved_ or success_ as keyword to the thread title

I have cross-posted, sorry, confused me, did not know what to do.

Dicussion about solved_ or success_ as keyword to the thread title in
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...05#post1614505

Regards

Thanks XavierP for a great article.

Consider adding to it the suggestion to not only Google; but also list the Google searches, each on a separate line with any quotes intact. The exact contents of the search box. If a Google search must be quoted, then use single quotes with an extra space: ' "my search phrase" linux -stupid_stuff '. But better to put the exact Google search terms on a separate line whence they can be copied & pasted to duplicate the search.

Same goes for LQ searches.

One of the benefits of this is that we then have an opportunity to teach proper search design -- teaching people to fish, rather than just giving them one.


As to Konch, I was puzzled by his posts. Is there any chance they were meant as a demonstration of the wrong & right ways of asking Q's? If so, let's mark them so; if not, don't you have the power to [re]move them?


I am in the middle of reading Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists by Barry Rosenberg, and it makes me think a companion "How To Answer a Question" would be a good idea.

I'll be having me lunch at Arrrrrby's.

XavierP wrote:

For a more detailed essay on asking questions, please read Eric S Raymond's How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.

As one of the two co-authors of that essay, I'm delighted that people appreciate it -- but do wish people would get the author credit right. Thanks.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

Apologies, I just know it as ESR's HowTo.

Not a problem. Once or twice in the past, I've had people quote my own very distinctive passages in that essay back at me, claiming that they were Eric's, and that's a really strange experience! ;-> (Each of us really did write about half of the thing.)

Best Regards,
Rick M.

I'll see if I can get this amended - credit where credit is due! :)

Thanks for the heads up Rick - the article has been updated.

--jeremy

Read through how to post a question and wanted to fill in my profile about hardware etc.
Just cannot find it . I mean where do I fill it. ?
In fact generally I have a very hard time getting back to something I saw somewhere . One of these was Jeremy's excellent write up about upgrading from one Fedora core 1 or 2 to 3 or 4.
I searched but could not get back again . Now I am not even certain that I saw it here.

How to Use LinuxQuestions.org is probably what you are looking for.

Wanna Help?
 

Hey kids, XavierP here.

I first wrote this guide over a year ago and I worry that it may need updating. So, if anyone sees anything in the article which needs to be added or changed to reflect the ever growing community, please post here and I'll ensure that it gets added (assuming it's relevant, of course).

And here's the fun fun fun part - if I use your suggestion, I'll credit you on the article. What more do you need than having your name on a great article!! :D


Obviously, I'm not looking to make this as comprehensive as ESR/Rick Moen's guide, it should where possible be appropriate to LQ.

Thanks all

Hey XavierP ;)

you could integrate the suggestions in the thread into your article if you like, so the harried or hasty newbie / reader ;) finds a complete package right there and then. Else it is still pertinent as ever...

That's the aim. I keep sending people over to look at it and there are members with it linked in their sigs and I want to be sure that there's nothing out of date or useless.

Once I've got a few recommendations, I'll amend the tutorial itself.

Hi, the current version is good because relatively short
my previous comments stands but maybe not practical in retrospect
(I'd love to know the status solved/unsolved, but from experience yes
it would not be filled).

Update
- The rate thread as been re-introduced
- the automated search based on thread title need mentioning
- advice before asking look in the HCL as well

When asking a question, sometimes stating roughly the level of understanding/expertise can help to answer

Maybe advice as to try to post lspci or lsub quite systematically
for hardware related questions. Same always state distro and mobo when relevant
(avoid time wasting and giving instruction that cannot be well understood by newbie because of the balance to have between CLI and GUI)

If enhancement makes it longer, you may want to split it in part I and II

Will rattle my brain a bit more later

So something like (Additions are in italics):
Good ideas Emmanuel_UK - keep 'em coming everyone.

dmesg | tail -n25
would tha not cut it to 25 automatically

This is a clever use of the tags!
I would not give people a choice. Lets have a unique tag
Solved? sound best to me, better than answered
I think tag searching is not case sensitive, is it not?

forgot
/var/log/Xorg.0.log often needed

Maybe a link to faqs (there is one for the wiki already)

wondering about the sound question is coming so often
so is what distro is right for me

so maybe the 3 or 5 most asked question could already be redirected

Answering your own thread can be counter-productive
because 0 answer threads get publicised in many ways.
So do not be too hasty in bumping your own thread.
A good well thougt question with details with 0 answer is good.
You can always edit and rephrase your own question with the edit
button at the bottom of the thread.

As often we will ask for
su; tail -f /var/log/syslog &
or for
sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog &
Do try to have a look at this in a terminal for whatever "technical" problem
you have, and see if there is any clue or alarm bells and whistles

My suggested addition (underscored):

Feel free to alter or omit.

Damn yer eyes man! A bunch of good ideas.

I think I will create a new section in the how to called "Pro-Tips for Posters" - that way, I can keep the existing sections pretty much as they are and add these into their own area.

and

I like it - I'm probably going to use it as is.

I almost forgot

Please read the LQ rules (you have already :-)
to be sure your question is appropriate. Homework questions are rarely
answered unless you have contributed 100s+ of post, in which case
moderators are sometimes charitable ;)

also forgot
"Please select the forum appropriately where to post question
A question about networking when you have spent 2 days on the distro is probably for the newbie forum, not networking
A mandriva compiz question is not for the sclackware forum, it is a mandriva question (I sware)
Reading the sub forum description will help you to decide.
It will get moved eventually if you choose the wrong forum, but every little help

Hehe :D

@ XavierP You might want to add a more forceful reminder to please give a complete profile and / or use the signature for more information on the hard- / software. Maybe Jeremy should make it mandatory to have a complete profile ;).

Emmanuel_UK - the correct wording should be I think that we don't want to be too prescriptive on where people should post: a new member may be someone who understands Linux and networking intimately but just needs an extra brain.

JZL240I-U - I agree, but think that that may be for my next project - updating the "How To Use LQ" tutorial!

How about then just:

Please try to post to the relevant forum (see forum
descriptions or sample some threads), as this will
maximise your chance of a rapid answer,
and will give the exposure your thread deserves.
LQ is not dogmatic on where people should post,
so you will find with experience you have quite some freedom.

Nvidia Driver install problems
 

Whoops wrong forum! See this would not happen if you do not divert the attention of first time posts at the begining of this Newbie forum. If you want it paid attention to post it alone on a pge leading to posting in this forum. Do not mix it among the posts complaining about our questions and expect all to heed its warning.

note

Pat

It's not mixed in. The how tos are all in their own section and the discussion area is in it's own section.

friendship
 

hai this is ashik


im new one
how to ask and get answar

Pick a forum relevant to the question you want to ask and then post your question.

And try to write as much about the problem as you can, give all the info you have so people understand what you want and can help you.

Debian Development

It seems that you are getting direct Mandrake Linux without ask any choice.

I think windows boot loader has been corrupted or windows information has been removed from your boot loader configuration file.

I would like to know what boot loader are you using.

However, follow the below step to find out you are root or not.

type id command after login.

If id will show 0 it means you are root otherwise you are normal user.

also, it will show the user name and group name.


Thanks,
Nagendra

As one of the very frequent problems that I see is a very poor choice of title, I'd like that section expanded and given more emphasis. I'm not really sure that it will help much though.

Suggestions (in a quote box, just to make it comparable to the previous version):
(OK, one of those bad titles was supposed to be humourous. I'm not sure that is appropriate, but it made me laugh when I thought of it.) Another approach might be to pair 'bad title' with 'good title' to show how each bad title might be improved, and that might have more impact).

I've seen one forum use [solved] added to the title to indicate a thread which had included an answer. I thought this was a good idea, however with the number of 'post once and then vanish' posters we have here, I have some doubts about whether it will work here. I don't know what the underlying difference is between fora for which this can work and fora for which it can't...

I see a number of posts with dramatically too much information and a larger number with dramatically too little. I would like OPs to consider the question "What information might an expert need to answer such a problem" because I can't believe that anyone who posts something like
"I have a program which crashes, help me" can have considered that.

And sometimes you see every system log posted, and I don't have the patience to read them, just in case there is something significant hiding in there (and I'm not claiming any particular expertise here, in asking posters to consider what an expert might need).

Another matter which might go here or into the initial instructions would be to give the community aspect more emphasis. I've seen some posts that I considered downright rude, because the OP didn't think about how other users could take advantage of their post and its outcomes and felt that their post was just for them (and that therefore they had the perfect right to make the answer difficult to find, after all it was their property).

So, I'd quite like to see a word or two to emphasise that the people who answer these questions like the idea of building up a searchable database of answers, so that the questions finally tail off (I know, I know). Or, at least, the number of "help me choose a distro" posts tail off.

I really should have added (it was getting late and it wasn't the best of days) that the principle behind what I was trying to do was to avoid, where possible, saying:

• these are the rules

and to state instead:

• this is what you, the OP, gain from doing this correctly and here are some suggestions/examples to clarify how to do it

I know this only sounds like a minor change of emphasis, but sometimes it makes a big difference.

Apologies for failing to include this in the previous post.

This probably means that you are reading logs inefficiently.
When there is too much information, it doesn't mean that you have to read all of it, it will be waste of time. You don't have to read every line of every system log, thinking about each line for an hour. Skip log it if you know it is irrelevant to a problem. Or "scan" log quickly with your eyes (will take up to 30 seconds for longest system log). If you notice something interesting, then you can stop and examine that part. And there is also "find" function in every browser, so if you know what error message you are looking for, just search for it.
It is the same as the system manuals - you won't ever need 80% of information available in manuals, so reading every manual (or every word in one manual) will be huge waste of time, because you will forget information you don't need/use. Instead either "scan through" manuals, or read only those parts that have something to do with information you are looking for.

In my opinion, when poster doesn't ask for help only for himself, this is normal, because discussion will be later found with search engines anyway. But when poster asks for something like "Ok, I fixed problem, now please delete thread so no one else will find the solution easily" (never seen such reply, by the way), this isn't.

No it doesn't. It means that I am not reading them at all because the OP has no clue about how to present his problem. My justification for this is that if the OP has no idea how to present a problem, it will often take massive effort just to find out what the real problem, as opposed to the seeming problem, actually is and life is too short. Maybe I should be more generous, but it turns out that having wasted a fair bit of time already, I am less generous with my time than I once was.
Not quite the situation that I saw (& I would quote the thread if I could find it, but I can't just at the moment). The OP asked for help for himself, received some suggestions, and then posted a 'I've soved it' post. When asked what the solution was he posted something along the lines of 'Why would I do that, I solved the problem' which I felt was cheating the community somehow.

Brilliant!
 

On the page telling people how to ask a question, the do's and dont's some-one posts a problem, twice...
Classic.

Hi Salasi, I missed your suggestions back in January. This is a pretty historical document as it was written out of a wee bit bit of frustration in 2004. At some point I will update it and will likely incorporate your suggestions.

As to VipX1's comment, obviously reading comprehension is not everyone's strong point....

lezlow@hackersclub.net
 

forgive me for saying this but as a novice these pages remind me of my talktalk internet page your just on a merrygo round going nowhere surely alpha numerical order would not of been so difficult to use/for us who have problems and an answer from your geeks attached, so us could see some other poor chaps problem/answer, easy?
now whilst i,m promoting linux/ubuntu im finding that you can,t get the help you need,talking on that launchpad is us., and trying to get help from the internet, they all want money?
ive been unable to add nero/mpeg encoder/lexmark/wubi/gpart[ubuntu]/myspeed/kaffiene[ubuntu][crashes p/c]and about 6/7 other minor programs that are incompatable with ubuntu 8.04 tried 9.04 didnt function kept freezing 8.04 brill really going places[to my old p/c to do copying/encode/and print your advice greatly welcome nb like i say im only a novice ive only been playing with ubuntu for 2years on and off

Good Explanations
 

I feel properly welcomed to the community and look forward to making new friends, getting answers to questions, and providing assistance to other Linux professionals and amateur users alike. Best wishes all.