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Telling expert humans what you're trying to achieve This is critical. All sorts of "dumb questions" turn out to have been created by faulty assumptions or bad

Telling expert humans what you're trying to achieve This is critical. All sorts of "dumb questions" turn out to have been created by faulty assumptions or bad solutions to a larger problem. Often it's like traveling to the top of a mountain to boil water instead of fixing the broken stove. When asking for help, users should always ask the big picture question ("I need help setting up a server to do X, I'm getting error message Y when doing Z" rather than just the specific problem "I'm getting error message Y when doing Z").

sophacles 17y ago
As a corollary: when providing help, always demand the big picture. Frequently you will catch flak for this, in the form of "I am the expert in X, I know what I'm doing just fix the miniscule thing", but it is always great to see the look on someone's face when you say "Oh, dept. Y already does that and makes the result available at foo, it should save you a few hours of work".
steveklabnik 17y ago
Sounds like a classic: How to Ask Questions the Smart Way http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
trafficlight 17y ago
An excuse to share my favorite bash.org quote: <glyph> For example - if you came in here asking "how do I use a jackhammer" we might ask "why do you need to use a jackhammer" <glyph> If the answer to the latter question is "to knock my grandmother's head off to let out the evil spirits that gave her cancer", then maybe the problem is actually unrelated to jackhammers http://bash.org/?866112 http://bash.org/?866112
Periodic 17y ago
I can personally attest that in the past I have spent an hour googling on a problem to figure out what to google to get a solution.
jon_dahl 17y ago
Good point. This is why in Extreme Programming (and Cucumber), user stories are supposed to include a "Why?". "As a user, I should be able to mark my favorite posts, so that I can find them again." It may turn out that users don't need to find old posts, or would prefer to search instead of looking through an old list.

sophacles 17y ago

As a corollary: when providing help, always demand the big picture. Frequently you will catch flak for this, in the form of "I am the expert in X, I know what I'm doing just fix the miniscule thing", but it is always great to see the look on someone's face when you say "Oh, dept. Y already does that and makes the result available at foo, it should save you a few hours of work".

steveklabnik 17y ago

Sounds like a classic: How to Ask Questions the Smart Way http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

trafficlight 17y ago

An excuse to share my favorite bash.org quote: <glyph> For example - if you came in here asking "how do I use a jackhammer" we might ask "why do you need to use a jackhammer" <glyph> If the answer to the latter question is "to knock my grandmother's head off to let out the evil spirits that gave her cancer", then maybe the problem is actually unrelated to jackhammers http://bash.org/?866112 http://bash.org/?866112

Periodic 17y ago

I can personally attest that in the past I have spent an hour googling on a problem to figure out what to google to get a solution.

jon_dahl 17y ago

Good point. This is why in Extreme Programming (and Cucumber), user stories are supposed to include a "Why?". "As a user, I should be able to mark my favorite posts, so that I can find them again." It may turn out that users don't need to find old posts, or would prefer to search instead of looking through an old list.