How to ask a question

How to ask a question
Many people do not know how to ask a question. Question is the greatest tool and key to learning. The following is compiled to help asking questions in the process of learning effectively.

When posting questions to a professional forum or newsgroup it is vital to format the question and it's content in a proper way in order to greatly increase the possibility for quickly receiving a good answer, and thus saving you time and frustration.

SYMPTOMS OF BAD QUESTIONS

After posting a question to a professional forum or newsgroup and waiting for a while, you get the following answer(s) from the active forum/newsgroup members:

"Your question does not contain all the required information needed for us to help you.
Please re-write your question, this time make sure you have all the needed info and
we'll try to help."

Another symptom of this error is getting the following answer:

"You question has been answered a hundred times. Please use a decent search engine
and/or search our archives before posting any future questions"

and others.

Other variations of the same answer exist, all depending on the forum/newsgroup quality and tolerance level.

In some severe cases, when trying to reply to this answer yourself, you may find out that the nickname you've been using to post on the forum, or that the alias you've been using to read and post on the newsgroup has been banned for any future use.

This article is a loose how-to guide for correct forum and newsgroup question-asking and general netiquette.

CAUSE

In most cases, getting such an answer (also called "Flame") indicates that you have not taken the right steps in formulating your question. In other instances, this type of answer might indicate that the information you saw fit to provide in your original question is either too little, too late, or totally missing or irrelevant to the question.

RESOLUTION

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 error 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 erase the E00.log file 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:

"After swing server restore - MBX store won't mount on Exchange 2003 - error C1041737"

will actually bring people in. Skilled members can tell, at a glance, what problem you're having, on what product version, 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, I cannot mount exchange mailbox store!!! 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?
- What was the exact error message that you received?
- How long have you been experiencing this problem?
- Have you searched the relevant forum/newsgroup archives?
- Have you searched for any tools or KB articles or any other resources?
- Have you recently installed or uninstalled any software or hardware?
- What changes were made to the system 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 (naturally, hardware or network-specific questions need their topic-specific information):

- What Operating System and Service Pack level are you using?
- What Exchange version and Service Pack level are you using?
- Tell us about your Active Directory domain environment, or if on a SOHO network, then information about your workgroup settings.
- Tell us about your name resolution topology (DNS, WINS etc.)
- If applicable, what does the LAN/WAN topology look like? Include TCP/IP-relevant information.
- Migration scenarios - add in your exact details.
- What does the Event Log say?
- Do you have current backups? Why not?
- What does the backup log say?
- Are you using Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware/Adware tool?
- Have you checked for virus infection?
- Is there a Firewall on the host or on the network?
- Do you have sufficient free disk space? Check again.
- Any other information you think we might need in order to help you.

- Do not make us ask your clarification questions, and do not make us point you back to the manual or readme file, or ask you to search the web 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 KB 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"...

Compiled from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

Asking Questions in Smart way

Please enter one short, simple question (at a time) with no punctuation and no personal details in the Ask form above, then click "Go".

Examples:

Don't ask this ...	Ask this ...
Bad question: My dad gave me this ball signed by Babe Ruth. It's got a scratch but it's still in pretty good shape. Tell me what it's worth: Joe@Schmoe.com. Thanx!	Good question: What is the value of a baseball autographed by Babe Ruth?
Bad question: HOW TO CHANGE OIL	Good question: How do you change the oil on a 1992 Ford Mustang 5.0?
Bad question: Does anybody know how to find a dog? Mine went missing on the 27th and I'm really scared.	Good question: How do you find a lost dog that has been missing for five days?
Bad question: who do u think is the best player?	Good question: Who is the most popular basketball player in the world?

Emphasis Tag Questions

Emphasis Tag Questions
English tag questions are normally stressed on the verb, but the stress is on the pronoun if there is a change of person.

* I don't like peas, do you?
* I like peas, don't you?

This is often a rising tag (especially when the tag contains no negation), or the intonation pattern may be the typically English fall-rise. In French, this would be expressed with et toi?, which is also a kind of tag question.

Intonation Tag Questions

Intonation Tag Questions
English tags can have a rising or a falling intonation pattern. We may contrast this with Polish, French or German, for example, where all tags rise. As a rule, the English rising pattern is used when soliciting information or motivating an action, that is, when some sort of response is required. Since normal English yes/no questions have rising patterns (e.g. Are you coming?), these tags make a grammatical statement into a real question:

* You're coming, aren't you?
* Do listen, will you?
* Let's have a beer, shall we?

The falling pattern is used to underline a statement. The statement itself ends with a falling pattern, and the tag sounds like an echo, strengthening the pattern. Most English tag questions have this falling pattern.

* He doesn't know what he's doing, does he?
* This is really boring, isn't it?

Sometimes the rising tag goes with the positive to positive pattern to create a confrontational effect:

* He was the best in the class, was he? (rising: the speaker is challenging this thesis, or perhaps expressing surprised interest)
* He was the best in the class, wasn't he? (falling: the speaker holds this opinion)
* Be careful, will you? (rising: expresses irritation)
* Take care, won't you? (falling: expresses concern)

Sometimes the same words may have different patterns depending on the situation or implication.

* You don't remember my name, do you? (rising: expresses surprise)
* You don't remember my name, do you? (falling: expresses amusement or resignation)
* Your name's Mary, isn't it? (rising: expresses uncertainty)
* Your name's Mary, isn't it? (falling: expresses confidence)

It is interesting that as an all-purpose tag the London set-phrase innit (for "isn't it") is only used with falling patterns:

* He doesn't know what he's doing, innit?
* He was the best in the class, innit?

On the other hand, the adverbial tag questions (alright? OK? etc.) are always found with rising patterns.

Negation Tag Questions

Negation Tag Questions
English tag questions may contain a negation, but need not. When there is no special emphasis, the rule of thumb often applies that a positive sentence has a negative tag and vice versa:

* She is French, isn't she?
* She's not French, is she?

These are sometimes called "balanced tag questions". However, it has been estimated that in normal conversation, as many as 40% of tags break this rule. "Unbalanced tag questions" (positive to positive or negative to negative) may be used for ironic or confrontational effects:

* Do listen, will you?
* Oh, I'm lazy, am I?
* Jack: I refuse to spend Sunday at your mother's house! Jill: Oh you do, do you? We'll see about that!
* Jack: I just won't go back! Jill: Oh you won't, won't you?

Patterns of negation can show regional variations. In North East Scotland, for example, positive to positive is used when no special effect is desired:

* This pizza's fine, is it? (standard English: This pizza's delicious, isn't it?)

Note the following variations in the negation when the auxiliary is the I form of the copula:

* England (and America, Australia, etc.): Clever, aren't I?
* Scotland/Northern Ireland: Clever, amn't I?
* nonstandard dialects: Clever, ain't I?

Auxiliary Tag Questions

Auxiliary Tag Questions
The English tag question is made up of an auxiliary verb and a pronoun. The auxiliary has to agree with the tense, aspect and modality of the verb in the preceding sentence. If the verb was in the perfect tense, for example, the tag question uses has or have; if the verb was in a present progressive form, the tag is formed with am, are, is; and if the sentence has a modal verb, this is echoed in the tag:

* He's read this book, hasn't he?
* He read this book, didn't he?
* He's reading this book, isn't he?
* He reads a lot of books, doesn't he?
* He'll read this book, won't he?
* He should read this book, shouldn't he?
* He can read this book, can't he?

Tag questions in English

Tag questions in English
English tag questions, when they have the grammatical form of a question, are untypically complex, because they vary according to four factors: the choice of auxiliary, the negation, the intonation pattern and the emphasis.

Tag questions are as follows in detail:

1. Auxiliary Tag Questions
2. Negation Tag Questions
3. Intonation Tag Questions
4. Emphasis Tag Questions