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I find when I ask questions in public forums and provide a lot of detail about the issue, it seems to get ignored because there's too much information compared

I find when I ask questions in public forums and provide a lot of detail about the issue, it seems to get ignored because there's too much information compared to other people who ask more basic questions that require follow up questions. Also with a detailed message, people don't seem to read (or grasp) the entire thing and get fixated on parts that aren't the issue or ask questions that I already answered in my initial question. I guess you need to know your audience and adjust your question style based on that.

EvanAnderson 4y ago
What's daunting is when you don't know the audience-- like opening a new tech support case. I could write a thorough narrative with a good description of my environment and details of all the things I tried to do. Then I get dismissed by a technician who says (this actually happened): "Your issue is to complicated to be solved over email. We need to have a call." The call lasted less than 5 minutes. It consisted of me reading my email (verbatim, because I'm an asshole and took being dismissed personally), the technician telling me what I needed to do, and me doing it. I could go with the whole "quick question" route and spend more time than it would take to write having a back-and-forth with a technician who can't let me speak and keeps interrupting with suggestions (for things I've already tried or aren't applicable), repeated questions( because they aren't keeping written notes), or out-right confusion (because they have preconceived ideas about my situation and haven't validated them with questions). I find it easiest to just grind away on a problem myself, reverse engineering, referring to source code, etc. Then I don't have to feel bad or make someone else feel bad. I loathe having to involve an unknown third-party. My confirmation bias says that it'll usually be bad.
deamanto 4y ago
Yep I suffer from this too. From my perspective it's trying to "prove" that I at least did some work on my part to figure it out and if someone were to ask me a question I would hope they do the same. I don't want to come off as the person who didn't spend a small amount of time researching myself before using up other people's time. But it's a double edged sword. I am not the most articulate person so sometimes the information ends up becoming more confusing for the reader which doesn't help either.

EvanAnderson 4y ago

What's daunting is when you don't know the audience-- like opening a new tech support case. I could write a thorough narrative with a good description of my environment and details of all the things I tried to do. Then I get dismissed by a technician who says (this actually happened): "Your issue is to complicated to be solved over email. We need to have a call." The call lasted less than 5 minutes. It consisted of me reading my email (verbatim, because I'm an asshole and took being dismissed personally), the technician telling me what I needed to do, and me doing it. I could go with the whole "quick question" route and spend more time than it would take to write having a back-and-forth with a technician who can't let me speak and keeps interrupting with suggestions (for things I've already tried or aren't applicable), repeated questions( because they aren't keeping written notes), or out-right confusion (because they have preconceived ideas about my situation and haven't validated them with questions). I find it easiest to just grind away on a problem myself, reverse engineering, referring to source code, etc. Then I don't have to feel bad or make someone else feel bad. I loathe having to involve an unknown third-party. My confirmation bias says that it'll usually be bad.

deamanto 4y ago

Yep I suffer from this too. From my perspective it's trying to "prove" that I at least did some work on my part to figure it out and if someone were to ask me a question I would hope they do the same. I don't want to come off as the person who didn't spend a small amount of time researching myself before using up other people's time. But it's a double edged sword. I am not the most articulate person so sometimes the information ends up becoming more confusing for the reader which doesn't help either.