How to get your questions answered.

bit · 1999-09-22T14:02:00

I have recently seen many people complaining, in various forms, that nobody is answering their question(s). This is definitely a problem. For those of you who are doing the complaining though ... my solution(s) may surprise you.First, give your question a descriptive subject line. Things like "HELP ME" and "I HAVE A PROBLEM" are not good subject lines. The reason? Many of us, do have other things to do. By glancing through the message subjects we can easily spot something that falls into our expertise. By using a vague subject ... you run a higher risk of somebody who may know the answer just ignoring it because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what they know. But they should read it anyway you say. Well, perhaps they should ... but it is their call. Remember you are the one who "desires" an answer. If it were me ... I would want to do everything I could to make sure that it got answered.That brings me to my next point, being specific. Many of you ask an extremely vague question and expect a 10 page answer. It doesn't work that way ... sorry. If I wanted funding I wouldn't just ask everybody I met for some money. I would tell them why I needed it and exactly how much I needed. The same thing applies to asking questions here. People will often blow you off if your are not being specific enough.Being specific is imperative to getting not only any answer, but also the correct one. If somebody wastes a page and a half, only for you to say that wasn't what you meant then there is a problem. Sometimes, the person answering the question made a major bumble. Yet, more often, it is the person who was asking the question being vague about what they wanted.By being specific and using a good subject line you can give your question a higher chance of being answered. If it still isn't answered then perhaps nobody here knows the answer to your question. We are all very smart, yet we do not know everything.My suggestion, if this is the case, is to search on the Internet for somebody who has done the same thing as your question and succeded. Then send them a nice eMail asking your question ... and hope for an answer. 9 times out of 10 you will get a response.I hope that helps out you guys in getting your questions answered. I highly doubt anybody is deliberately ignoring you ... so give my suggestions a try if you are having troubles.- Chris

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Started by bit September 22, 1999 02:02 PM

10 comments, last by bit 24 years, 7 months ago

Turtle

122

September 22, 1999 02:02 PM

It would be really nice if such a faq could be made, and have a program automatically cross referance with new posts. I doubt this would be a simple thing to do, but I can try to build some code for it if you get a faq up and running.

Great Idea!

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Tell the truth and you will never fear someone will figure out you lied.
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David Abresch
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How to get your questions answered.

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How to get your questions answered.

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