| onebuck |
10-29-2014 11:16 AM |
Member Response
Hi,
I try to lead by example throughout my daily life, no different here at LQ. Sometimes my response can seem terse but not intended. One reason I will set a post aside then come back to re-read to see if my tone along with response is proper before pressing <Submit>.
Sometimes I will not even respond because of an issue that I know should be helped but in hope that fellow members will attempt. If no response then I will attempt to provide a useful response. Our LQ member knowledge base is broad and very proficient when trying to help other members. Sometimes some member may come across as terse or provocative with their communication(s). Their narrative may seem to be trite but if that member would try to look at their response from the readers perspective then possibly tweak the response to come across as positive narrative then everyone will be serviced/helped here at LQ.
Excerpt from Introduction that does represent how some respondents feel here at LQ; ; 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way';
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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.
Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.
What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks — they take without giving back, and they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this “losers” (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it “lusers”).
We realize that there are many people who just want to use the software we write, and who have no interest in learning technical details. For most people, a computer is merely a tool, a means to an end; they have more important things to do and lives to live. We acknowledge that, and don't expect everyone to take an interest in the technical matters that fascinate us. Nevertheless, our style of answering questions is tuned for people who do take such an interest and are willing to be active participants in problem-solving. That's not going to change. Nor should it; if it did, we would become less effective at the things we do best.
We're (largely) volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. So we filter ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear to be losers in order to spend our question-answering time more efficiently, on winners.
If you find this attitude obnoxious, condescending, or arrogant, check your assumptions. We're not asking you to genuflect to us — in fact, most of us would love nothing more than to deal with you as an equal and welcome you into our culture, if you put in the effort required to make that possible. But it's simply not efficient for us to try to help people who are not willing to help themselves. It's OK to be ignorant; it's not OK to play stupid.
So, while it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of attitude that leads to competence — alert, thoughtful, observant, willing to be an active partner in developing a solution. If you can't live with this sort of discrimination, we suggest you pay somebody for a commercial support contract instead of asking hackers to personally donate help to you.
If you decide to come to us for help, you don't want to be one of the losers. You don't want to seem like one, either. The best way to get a rapid and responsive answer is to ask it like a person with smarts, confidence, and clues who just happens to need help on one particular problem.
(Improvements to this guide are welcome. You can mail suggestions to esr@thyrsus.com or respond-auto@linuxmafia.com. Note however that this document is not intended to be a general guide to netiquette, and we will generally reject suggestions that are not specifically related to eliciting useful answers in a technical forum.)
Before You Ask
Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or on a website chat board, do the following:
- Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum you plan to post to.
- Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
- Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
- Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
- Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
- Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
- If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.
When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.
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I do believe that some of the above narrative can be used to compile a new user response. Sure the response would need to be compressed to a useful reading for a New LQ member. If we use too long of a response then the new member will just overlook and ignore useful information entirely.
LQ needs a simplified response that will provide a good guideline for reply composition. We could link within the response to How to Ask Questions the Smart Way for members who would want detailed information.
Jeremy's post # 15 does show a sample response to new members;
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeremy
(Post 5260928)
Quote:
You should include as much detail as possible in your message, including exact error messages (where applicable) and what you have done so far. The more detail you include the more we can help. You should also use the board's search feature to ensure that the question has not already been asked.
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The third piece is a yet unwritten canned response for members who fail to follow these guidelines. This should be friendly, helpful and concise while also explaining the repercussion if not followed (which is LQ likely not being able to provide help for that member moving forward).
I'm open to suggestions and additional ideas from here.
--jeremy
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Simple modification to response for new LQ members;
Quote:
You should include as much detail as possible in your message, including exact error messages (where applicable) and what you have done so far. The more detail you include the more we can help. You should also use the board's search feature to ensure that the question has not already been asked. You can look at: How to Ask Questions the Smart Way for additional reply composition help
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Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip: |
