sicherlich ist die Anfrage von Christian nicht sehr exakt
gefasst und lässt Interpretationsmöglichkeiten zu.
Wieso. Ein glasklares „funzt nich“.
Aber, meiner Meinung nach sollte ein „Experte“ mehr drauf
haben, als solchen Mist zu antworten.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
by Eric S. Raymond
Author of `Cathedral and the Bazaar’
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 that is likely to get you a satisfactory answer.
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 do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks – they take without giving back, they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another
Good and Bad Questions
Finally, I’m going to illustrate how to ask questions in a smart way by example; pairs of questions about the same problem, one asked in a stupid way and one in a smart way.
Stupid:
Where can I find out stuff about the Foonly Flurbamatic?
This question just begs for „STFW“[1] as a reply.
Smart:
I used Google to try to find „Foonly Flurbamatic 2600“ on the Web, but I got no useful hits. Does anyone know where I can find programming information on this device?
This one has already SFTWed, and sounds like he might have a real problem.
Stupid:
I can’t get the code from project foo to compile. Why is it broken?
He assumes that somebody else screwed up. Arrogant of him.
Smart:
The code from project foo doesn’t compile under Nulix version 6.2. I’ve read the FAQ, but it doesn’t have anything in it about Nulix- related problems. Here’s a transcript of my compilation attempt; is it something I did?
He’s specified the environment, he’s read the FAQ, he’s showing the error, and he’s not assuming his problems are someone else’s fault. This guy might be worth some attention.
Stupid:
I’m having problems with my motherboard. Can anybody help?
Oder nach DJB:
Note to experienced users: Please don’t encourage anti-support behavior. Don’t try to answer questions from users who don’t provide the necessary information. Guessing what they did is an incredible waste of time.
[¹] Search the fucking web.