- Mar 1, 2000
- 30,890
- 5,001
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MS support on "how to ask a question"
- Thread starter Homerboy
- Start date
"Google is your best friend" :laugh:
"- Use online search engines such as MSN Search, Google (which, by now, you should know is your friend)" :laugh:
"- Use online search engines such as MSN Search, Google (which, by now, you should know is your friend)" :laugh:
Phoenix86
Lifer
- May 21, 2003
- 14,644
- 10
- 81
Article quoted in case it "disappears"
How to ask a question
View products that this article applies to.
Author: Daniel Petri MVP
Community Solutions Content Disclaimer
Article ID : 555372
Last Review : July 19, 2005
Revision : 1.0
SYMPTOMS
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 zillion times. Please use a decent search engine
and/or search our archives before posting any future questions"
or
"RTFM"
"STFW"
"Google is your best friend"
and others.
Other variations of the same answer exist, all depending on the forum/newsgroup quality and percentage of hackers or open source enthusiasts on the forum/newsgroup members list.
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 formulation 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. In fact, it's a very good idea to do a keyword search for words relating to your problem on the archives before you post. It may find you an answer, and if not it will help you formulate a better question.
- Use online search engines such as MSN Search, Google (which, by now, you should know is your friend), Yahoo! and others. Post the error message you're getting on your preferred search engine and see what you come up with. For example:
"I searched Google and found this page that discusses a similar error..."
- Look for an answer in the manual (or RTFM for short), documentation or Readme file. For example:
"The readme clearly indicated that I should do this, but it seems to..."
- 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 (RTFM), Google, MSN Search or Yahoo! (STFW for short). 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 your homework and that you're not just wasting people's time. Most active forum members like to help but hate lazy people that just ask because they don't want to bother to do the search themselves. Show us that your question implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.
- Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language. Usually, people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy thinkers. Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not rewarding, we'd rather spend our time elsewhere. Express your question clearly. If you can't be bothered to do that, we can't be bothered to pay attention. Spend the extra effort to polish your language. It doesn't have to be stiff or formal, but it has to be precise. Don't type IN ALL CAPS, this is read as shouting and considered rude.
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 all what an online community is 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. 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"...
How to ask a question
View products that this article applies to.
Author: Daniel Petri MVP
Community Solutions Content Disclaimer
Article ID : 555372
Last Review : July 19, 2005
Revision : 1.0
SYMPTOMS
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 zillion times. Please use a decent search engine
and/or search our archives before posting any future questions"
or
"RTFM"
"STFW"
"Google is your best friend"
and others.
Other variations of the same answer exist, all depending on the forum/newsgroup quality and percentage of hackers or open source enthusiasts on the forum/newsgroup members list.
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 formulation 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. In fact, it's a very good idea to do a keyword search for words relating to your problem on the archives before you post. It may find you an answer, and if not it will help you formulate a better question.
- Use online search engines such as MSN Search, Google (which, by now, you should know is your friend), Yahoo! and others. Post the error message you're getting on your preferred search engine and see what you come up with. For example:
"I searched Google and found this page that discusses a similar error..."
- Look for an answer in the manual (or RTFM for short), documentation or Readme file. For example:
"The readme clearly indicated that I should do this, but it seems to..."
- 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 (RTFM), Google, MSN Search or Yahoo! (STFW for short). 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 your homework and that you're not just wasting people's time. Most active forum members like to help but hate lazy people that just ask because they don't want to bother to do the search themselves. Show us that your question implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.
- Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language. Usually, people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy thinkers. Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not rewarding, we'd rather spend our time elsewhere. Express your question clearly. If you can't be bothered to do that, we can't be bothered to pay attention. Spend the extra effort to polish your language. It doesn't have to be stiff or formal, but it has to be precise. Don't type IN ALL CAPS, this is read as shouting and considered rude.
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 all what an online community is 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. 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"...
neutralizer
Lifer
- Oct 4, 2001
- 11,552
- 1
- 0
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