There is always a time in our lives when we all experience a road block and looked around seeking for help, and in response we don’t get the answer were looking for. Well I am sorry to say that the reason you didn’t get an effective answer is not the source’s fault, it’s you. Have you ever heard of the saying “Dumb questions get dumb answers”? Well, in my experience in retail, I can raise my hand that the statement is 100% true.
According to Eric Raymond in “How to ask questions the smart way”, he goes into detail on how to avoid looking stupid and teaches us well basically how to ask questions the smart way. I suggest you read the article and come back unless you want to be stuck in a never ending while loop of receiving pitiful solutions.
Better yourself! Click the link! article.
Now that you’ve return a wiser human being, I found some questions on stack overflow to help you understand how to produce a smart question. Link to smart question. The questioner at hand begins his question stating exactly what his problem is. Another good thing they did right was to show his process on how he tried to find a solution. He also shows that he is trying to be a part of the process by asking “what am I missing” and courtesy of doing a follow up on his solution. As a result, the quality question was resolved in the first answer given on what went wrong and the questioner was able to fix his problem and find a solution.
An example of a bad question would be this. Here the questioner doesn’t share his process in how they tried to solve the problem and doesn’t really specify the road block he ran into. In response, a commenter questions him about his process and sends him links on how to improve their questions.
Although we all make mistakes and ask silly questions, its good to know that we can save ourselves time by taking a few extra steps to develop a better question. We can filter out non helpful answers by asking a good question and increase our chances in finding an effective solution.