10 ms·
Don't ask to ask, just ask
- nikivi 6y agoI wrote something similar in my wiki too: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/research/asking-questions https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/research/asking-questions Boiling it down to a series of broad steps: 1. Do your own research first. 2. Include things you have tried and thought of before asking the question. 3. Be explicit about what you want to achieve in the end and provide as much information as possible to help. 4. Respect other people's time. Learned it the hard way.
- renewiltord 6y agoThis is a safe one, actually, because if you ask this way you won't get answers, so it's really your own problem. These negative feedback loops are great! Positive feedback loops are ones like "Java sucks. You can't even do $THING_THAT_YOU_KNOW_IT_CAN_DO_BUT_DO_NOT_KNOW_HOW" which need websites.
- mcqueenjordan 6y agoSomewhat related idea: https://www.nohello.com/ https://www.nohello.com/
- cosenal 6y agothat is linked at the bottom of the page
- expatriate 6y agoThis happens all the time when planning social events, e.g. "Are you busy tomorrow?" instead of "Do you want to go watch a movie tomorrow?"
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoThat one is bad because "are you busy tomorrow" has equal chance of you asking me to do something distasteful, so I'm usually going to opt for a "no" because I have no desire to move that couch for you, but I may be open to seeing a movie together.
- hnick 6y agoI will just say "why" or "that depends, I'm busy but maybe I can make room". There seems to be an attitude that we shouldn't be rude to people, but to be honest, I learned such things at a young age from blunt responses like this. Along with the old response "Can I ask you a question" "You just asked me one". They forced introspection.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- derekp7 6y agoThe problem I have is I tend to go to the opposite extreme. In anticipation of any question that someone may raise about the issue I'm asking about, I tend to give a lot of background (most of it probably irrelevant) and other details. No one wants to have to read through my whole life story, just to get to the meat of my query an answer it.
- bobwaycott 6y agoI, too, share this struggle.
- yorwba 6y agoJust put the meat of your query at the top and the potentially unnecessary background information below it. Then whoever answers you can skip the background if it's really unnecessary.
- ljm 6y agoThere's a middle ground where you describe what steps you've already taken, or things you've tried, after you've described the problem at hand (with examples or links if possible). At least then you're already providing enough info about what you've done so far that you can get a better quality response, or even a response advising to do something totally different. Most of my posts are a little long-winded as a result, but I'm laying down the breadcrumb trail for someone who might be able to help but see things differently.
- atoav 6y agoBottom line first. Just say what you are trying to solve/struggling with in one or two lines. Give more background in the next lines
- city41 6y agoI think the background can be helpful though. I will often gather it into a gist or something like that and link to it. Then people who are pitching in can realize they need that detail and head to it without having to make an additional exchange with you, or ignore it if it proves superfluous.
- 6y ago
- city41 6y agoI agree with this and also nohello.com (as linked in the article). I want to add a third one: ask your question in a channel if possible, not as a direct message to someone. DM'ing someone directly puts a lot of unfair pressure on that person, and also denies other people from both helping and learning. I think some people are embarrassed to ask for help in channels, and that's an embarrassment well worth getting over.
- finaliteration 6y agoI love asking for help in channels because I feel like it socializes the answer and process for finding it much better than a DM does. It also helps build trust within the team because someone can see a “stupid” question get asked and then answered and then also feel comfortable asking questions like that. That being said, I have worked for some shitty bosses who have told me not to post questions and information in channels directly because they want them “vetted” first. I’ll never work for someone like that ever again.
- Consultant32452 6y agoAt my office everyone does the hello ritual. It's so ingrained if there's more than about 10 mins between responses, people will start the hello ritual again. I once asked someone I thought was becoming a friend if we could skip the hello ritual since we're good friends. They were extremely offended. I gave up and just perform the ritual.
- jakecarpenter 6y agoAgreed, the world would be a simpler place if we all followed the same play book...for online communication and everything else. But we don't, and we probably can't. Cultural, language, religious, gender, and educational differences mean that part of any non-trivial discussion is going to involve some sort of "handshake" where you establish the rules of the discussion. And it is going to be a slightly set of rules for any discussion. I've seen sites (and before the web, messages) like this for years. You paste the link and are on your way. Or, more commonly, you paste the link and then proceed to provide the information someone is looking for. This is a variation of the "use the search, this has been covered" fight that every forum has. Why go through that? If you want to engage with somebody, do it. If not, don't.
- LifeIsBio 6y agoIt's also worth pointing out the inherent utility of forcing yourself to write out a well-thought-out question. The number of times I've made it 3/4 of the way through a stackoverflow question before finding out what the problem was for myself is silly. I've started doing it intentionally. If I'm stuck on something, I'll start a slack message with no real intention of sending it. Works wonders.
- wonder_er 6y agoI wrote a similar guide (less concise/maybe more detailed) a few years back: https://josh.works/better-questions https://josh.works/better-questions In another post, I make a case for never, ever asking "are you there?" in Slack[0]. It's been popular for my friends who work on remote teams inside of larger non-remote companies. Both are relevant, both try to encourage us to be respectful of the time and effort others might give us. https://josh.works/whole-messages-in-slack#you-there-and-other-messages-to-never-send https://josh.works/whole-messages-in-slack#you-there-and-oth...
- jessaustin 6y agoEvery excellent suggestion there seems to make Slack more like good, old-fashioned email. That would have been difficult to market, so one can see why Slack themselves haven't made these suggestions.
- grey-area 6y agoExactly. People are rediscovering that async conversation is more efficient and respectful of time than synchronous chat. There are very few work circumstances where chat is more efficient (e.g. incident response). We avoid slack at the place I work for this reason - email, public boards and other async methods work fine for managers and makers.
- jbay808 6y agoI once checked my Slack to find that, an hour previously, a coworker had sent me a message: "Hello jbay808". So I wrote back: "Hello coworker." An hour after that, I got a reply from him: "lol. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that there's a bug in SW version 0.3..." And I was wondering, why not open with "Hello jbay808, I just wanted to let you know..."? It was a perfectly good asynchronous discussion after that.
- wonder_er 6y agoYep. A 1:1 transfer from "normal conversation" to "slack conversation" can be really annoying. If I barged into your office for help and before you'd even made eye contacted started with "hey jbay808 I'm trying to run this database migration but keep getting validation errors..." and that was the first thing I'd said to you in three days? no good. Doing this in slack? :chef-kiss:
- Kluny 6y agoThis is a lesson I learned while writing call-to-action emails. I'd start with a draft that was like, "Due to xxx situation, we have political momentum this week and want to take advantage of it by canvassing even harder than usual. Can I ask you to take another shift this week?" That became, "Will you take a second canvassing shift this week? Due to xxx situation, we have political momentum this week and want to capitalize on it by doubling our canvassing shifts. Will you commit?" The second gets better results and is way less irritating to read as a recipient, even though it feels aggressive to write it.
- scubbo 6y agoThat's surprising to me. I would have expected the latter to lead to a subconcious "no" upon reading the first sentence, and then you're arguing uphill against that position. I suppose the former is more likely to be mentally filtered out as spam or marketing before the end of the first sentence (no aspersions upon you or your communication! It's valuable. But it also looks similar to the format of spam or marketing, through no fault of your own)
- Kluny 6y agoIn this case, the difference is that I already have buy-in for the people receiving these emails (volunteers who have worked for me before). If it was a cold email, it would be a softer lead for sure.
- akvadrako 6y agoThanks for the example, but I'm not so convinced that's the reason. The second example shows you respect people's time by starting with a minimal abstract that gets the point across, then explaining the details, followed by a conclusion. The first example sounds manipulative and disrespectful.
- Kluny 6y agoAlso possible, good point.
- csours 6y agoBest resource I've found on asking technical questions (also linked at the bottom of the post): "How to Ask Questions The Smart Way" http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html 'Smart Questions' should be required reading when onboarding college hires to technical jobs. I still think about it when writing emails, and it helped me greatly when I was a tester to write better bugs.
- 2bitencryption 6y agoI'm bemused by the concept of this "single page with dedicated domain name explaining a concept in three short paragraphs". Especially because this one claims at the bottom that it was mostly taken from here: http://sol.gfxile.net/dontask.html http://sol.gfxile.net/dontask.html So... why not just link to that page? Why register a domain and pretty much copy-paste that content? I'm not trying to be inflammatory, just trying to understand this concept. Do people share these links with others or is it just for Hacker News credo?
- csours 6y agoSo you can link it to someone to give them a clue.
- scubbo 6y agoMuch like "nohello.com", I assume that it exists to be easily memorable and recognizable in a profile.
- rytill 6y agoI see it as a sort of staking mechanism. Someone is pre-committed to and zealous enough about this thing that they're paying $X/yr to leave up their memo on a dedicated domain.
- hnick 6y agoEasier to remember/link. Domains are cheap ($10 a year or something). Signalling that yes, this is an important enough issue to dedicate a whole site to. SEO (more people stumbling on it by mistake, or a nice cash out later, your choice). You own it (if it already exists, that page might die one day).
- chiefalchemist 6y agoIf you bother at all, the response is simple: "Yes. Why do you ask?" It works both ways. Bad questions too often get answers, but often bad answers. That is, questions often should be met with more questions. But they're not. Many people are wired to want to help - which is great - but too few are wired for critical thinking and analysis.
- branweb 6y agoI agree it's better to just ask, but whenever I catch myself asking to ask, it's not due to laziness but rather to (perhaps misguided) politeness. Sometimes it feels a little abrupt to dm someone or bust into a team channel and just start asking questions (though perhaps that's irrational since it never bothers me when the roles are reversed). I think the site would be a little better if it addressed this motivation too.
- xwdv 6y agoIt is better to be efficient than polite. Better to be predictable than "nice".
- msla 6y ago> It is better to be efficient than polite. Better to be predictable than "nice". At work, efficiency is polite and predictability is nice. Watercooler talk excepted, of course, and my company has a couple "watercooler" Slack channels.
- JadeNB 6y ago> It is better to be efficient than polite. Better to be predictable than "nice". I probably agree on the second, but I think the first is subject to what the definition of 'better' is. If someone has to give me, say, a bad evaluation of my performance, then the most efficient way for them to do it is to walk up, say "terrible performance" (and possibly list reasons), and leave—but I certainly don't feel, as the recipient of the news, that that is the best way for it to be delivered.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vernie 6y agoNice follow-up to No Hello from a few days ago. This is good but I don't think it goes far enough. Ask? That's weak shit. Demand. Maybe start with "One of you worthless motherfuckers". Edit: Maybe also threaten violence if your question isn't answered.
- rhacker 6y agoWe have someone on our team that speaks like this. They caused someone to quit last week. I know your comment is a joke, but there are actually different backgrounds in play where this stuff doesn't fly. (Not everyone is jokey you)
- vernie 6y agoHow has that person not been fired or at very least been disciplined? I know people on here like to think they're doing important work but we're mostly just making dumb websites and it's not that hard to find someone who can do that and isn't a dickhead.
- m3kw9 6y agoA website just for that. Just to get a point across.
- labster 6y agoI have a comment on this topic, is it okay if I share?
- ajaimk 6y agoWe call this "Actionable IM" where I work. Anyone who doesn't use it doesn't get a response.
- dgellow 6y agoThat sounds harsh.
- dang 6y agoRelated from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880
- hinkley 6y agoA variant on this problem was proposed to me years ago and I still try to follow the advice. When you haven't talked to a person in a while (or ever), especially someone who is used to being asked for favors, they may become guarded and reticent if you open with small talk out of nowhere. They will sense the other shoe and be preoccupied with predicting when it will drop. It's better, I'm told, to rip off the bandaid. To say something like, "Hey can I borrow your <tool I don't own>? It would really help me. How are the kids? Did you ever finish that shed you were working on?" It's much less manipulative and open about what exactly is happening. And it's open-ended. You don't end up sabotaging yourself by interrupting halfway through their story about emergency visits to the orthodontist to ask about that tool, because you only allocated three minutes to pretending to be interested.
- zepearl 6y agoI agree with the the article - mention directly the problem (context & your own problem) in as few words as possible to allow people to understand if they can help or not. Same thing about "Do you have a minute?" (most of the time in the company's internal chat, but sometimes as well on the phone) => I'm really working most of the time on stuff that might range from bureaucratic things to confcalls in major incidents => mentioning the context&problem would allow me to take an informed decision. Having said this, I do fall into this trap from time to time :)
- romwell 6y agoJust to clarify: the problem is not asking to ask (or saying "hello", as in nohello.com) - the problem is waiting for a response to the message before saying what you were going to say to begin with. Nothing wrong with "Any Java experts around? I haven't updated my Java knowledge since version 5, and am looking for resources to lean from", for example. Similarly, "Hey John, would you have 15 minutes? I have a question about such-and-such API that you have worked with" is non-problematic, whereas "Hey John, would you have 15 minutes?" by itself is. If the next thing you say does not depend on the response, say it right way. In short: when you have something to say, say it.
- chiefofgxbxl 6y agoThis reminds me of all the cases of "This notice is to inform you that " notices posted around public and in my apartment complex. When COVID hit, the grocery store posted a nice multi-paragraph letter on the window to the effect of "This notice is to inform you that due to an executive order signed by Gov. ... wearing a mask while in this store is now required." Took several months, but finally it's replaced by a much better, "No mask, no service" sign using an image of a mask and massive font. One from my apartment building was an entire letter essentially telling people "security cameras in use". Get to the point. Use few words and large fonts. Use images. Don't make people think.
- HenryBemis 6y agoWouldn't the typical sign (yellow triangle with camera icon, and text "CCTV in operation") do the work? Nobody will read a letter on a door, but a shiny yellow poster A4/Letter would definitely attract the eyeballs. Or is it a regulatory thingie, that you "must" have the letter? (genuinely asking - are you in the US)?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- legitster 6y agoI hate hate hate this advice. I am a complete idiot at coding. And one of the biggest barriers to getting good at it is I don't even know how to ask good questions. Online communities are already toxic places for newcomers. Ask a dumb question on StackOverflow and you get downvoted and griped at. I know I am an idiot! I know I don't understand what I am asking for! This is a cry for help! >..which is just lazy. If you're not willing to do the work to solve your problem, why should we? When I ask a vague, dumb plea, I am intentionally trying to weed out the pedantic people who would rather write a blog post about how dumb I am than stop to help me. If they have the time to follow up, they will have the patience to help me. Everyone else should move along. If everyone has to stop and think of a logical and formalized way to ask a question, no one will bother asking for help. Think of every time you have reached outside of your domain - you would be so much worse off if you spent the entire time researching the right way to ask something than just asking for help. In fact, I will turn it around. If you are not actually stopping to thoughtfully answer dumb questions, you are not actually teaching anyone anything.
- xboxnolifes 6y agoI disagree with the topic you think the piece is even about. The piece isn't about having a well thought out question at all. It's about not asking for permission to ask the question. People don't want to say "sure, I'm around" and then 5-10 minutes later say "sorry, I don't have experience with that". They want people to ask a question to the best of their ability and if they think they can help they will. The domain I'm thinking about in my example is tournament organizing. So many questions start off with. > Can someone help me? Or > I have a question. And want nothing else than a 'sure' or 'yes?' before asking their questions. But why not just ask the question / state the issue that is almost always already thought out as: > I'm having an issue with registering my team. Or > Am I eligible to participate if X? There was no long and thought out process of "logical and formalized" question forming here. It was just avoiding the waste of time between the asker having a question and getting an answer.
- jancsika 6y ago> People don't want to say "sure, I'm around" and then 5-10 minutes later say "sorry, I don't have experience with that". Yes, if only humans could outsource such desiderata to some kind of specialized "engine" that could produce human language sentence given a set of explicit data and instructions. Would this be the right forum to ask about how to design such an engine? Seriously asking because it doesn't look like anyone here has experience with solving such a novel problem.
- jancsika 6y agoHere's a fun game: create an HN client that recreates the same UX problems that these anti-social "netiquette" guides attempted to address. In other words-- in what specific way can you fuck up the UI of HN to cause users to become so timid and confused that they create posts asking if it's ok to post here. Another fun one would be to screw up the UX for replying such that an average of 2% of each thread is filled with veterans telling neophytes not to create top posts but to instead reply underneath the comment they're responding to.
- juped 6y agoDon't worry, Gmail made top-posting cool.
- Kuraj 6y agoI don't know. The reason I tend to do this is because sometimes I have problems with figuring out what my issue actually is, and that I might be running into an XY problem. For these reasons I prefer to engage in a synchronous form of communication. That doesn't mean that I expect someone to commit or that I won't respect the person's boundaries when they refuse to help for whatever reason.
- Lammy 6y agoCorollary: Rebuke people in your company/community who respond to beginner questions with "RTFM"-like anger.
- badrabbit 6y agoI hate this so much, if you are posting a question in a q&a forum like stackoverflow, this rule makes perfect sense. But in a conversation it is perfectly normal to gauge interest or ask if is ok to ask a question hoping you will be directed to a better place. Why is online conversation so special? We are not writing a letter with a pen,it's instant just like having a normal talking conversation. Sure,the actual question should be conscise but the norms and etiquettes of conversation pre-exist for a reason.
- treesprite82 6y ago> Why is online conversation so special? Because it has the potential to be asynchronous. If I glance through a channel and see a bunch of questions then I can answer them in just the time it takes for me to write an answer. Whereas if I see "Hey can anyone help me?" then I need to ask "Possibly. What's the issue?" and wait for the asker to return, see my message, then formulate their question. Note that this is assuming a programming chat room. "Asking to ask" makes slightly more sense in a 1-1 DM with someone. > the norms and etiquettes of conversation pre-exist for a reason Mostly for face-to-face conversations.