iQuestions
07 Sep 2017
I’ve known my closest friend for about 7 years now. Ever since I’ve met him, he’s had a knack for making me annoyed whenever he asked a question. Usually, I don’t mind answering questions, but the things he asked seemed like something everyone should have known. Now, I’m not talking about common sense things such as not to pour milk before your cereal (yes, cereal goes before the milk so you can gauge how much milk you need). I’m talking about things such as what was for homework, or information that has been sent out via email for weeks at a time. As we progressed into college, we both entered the Air Force ROTC program. Within this program, the main method of communication was via email. As the saying goes, old habits die hard. Whenever something comes up that he’s not familiar with, he asks questions because he didn’t read his emails or took the time to look it up. It started to annoy me to a point I felt like I was babying him. To protect his confidentiality, let us call him Carl.
As time progressed, I started to not answer Carl’s questions. I would respond with short answers like “check your email” or “you should have paid attention in class.” I felt that as an adult, Carl lacked the responsibly and initiative to not only do his role to attain the information in the first place, but to research it himself before using other people’s time and energy. At some points, I felt that Carl’s behavior was just my pet peeve. Some people didn’t seem to mind his blank state of mind, but no one spends more time with Carl than I do. I pondered this for a while, wondering if it’s a legitimate reason to be annoyed. And then I ran into this essay.
“How To Ask Questions The Smart Way” is an enlightening essay wrote by Eric Steven Raymond. This essay outlines certain etiquettes that the person asking the question should follow if they want maximum participation. One of the most enlightening parts of this essay was when the author describes that professionals do not have time to deal with simple questions that can easily be searched up on the web. Even if it’s something a little more complicated, it’s basic etiquette to spend their own time to try and find the answer first before requesting help. After someone has genuinely tried to solve the problem, then they should ask questions, providing details of what they have done to try and find the answer and other information they have gathered along the way of their journey.
A great example of asking questions the smart way is shown in StackOverflow. User GManNickG asks a question why one type of array processes faster than another type. He starts off with his C++ code and explains how when he changes one line, the runtime changes. GManNickG tests this out and adds his findings, specifying the exact runtimes for each trial. He even throws in his own speculations, and rewrote and posted the program again in Java just to see if he could prove it. When that failed, he asks two questions in a simple, specific manner that anyone could understand (assuming they have basic programming experience). This question ended up receiving 16 answers, one of them having over 25,500 upvotes.
In this situation, it is obvious that the questioner has done their research, went out of their way to test things out, and posted his findings in the question. By doing this, GManNickG shows that he put effort into his problem, rather than attempting to find a quick solution. The answer that was given to him was in extreme detail, almost tripling in size of the question itself. This shows that the more effort one puts into their question, the more effort one will receive in the answer.
However, StackOverflow is not filled with these engaging, tested questions. 90% of the forum is filled with people asking basic questions that either don’t end up getting answered or have very short answers that seem as if almost no effort was contributed to it. An example of the “not so smart” question is made by user Arun Kumar M in this post. First, his header is “Set zero for missing data in high charts.” This type of header does not specifically tell the reader what the problem is, making it hard to understand the question until they read the whole thing. However, the question itself is also lacking content. The question restates what is in the header, and posts a small bit of code followed by a “thank you.” Arun Kumar M shows no effort to figure this out for themselves, and makes no contribution to the solution. Questions like these end up getting no answers or votes, which is modeled in this example.
All in all, asking smart questions is incredibly important to making sure you not only get the help you need, but keeping your friendships alive. Although I love Carl to death, he just really seems so slow at times, and I worry about where he’d be if it wasn’t for me. Don’t be like Carl.