“May I please borrow your mind?”

A meeting of minds

The internet is wonderful in that it has the potential to connect the minds of almost everybody on the planet should they seek to connect to one another. It also is cursed by the sheer amount of information that is committed to the internet by very variable levels of intelligence and temperaments. This often leads to garbage on the internet where one would otherwise seek gold. The world of computing is encompassed by very large communities and repositories of forums containing discussions and troubleshooting for many of the near infinite number of issues that arrive while exercising computer science. These are asked and answered by people with varying degrees of experience and thus a form of etiquette has been formed so as to not disrespect those that you wish to answer your questions. Questions answered should be well researched ahead of time and composed in a readable and concise way that details exactly when/where/what the problem entails. It may also be helpful to provide what solutions one has tried already so as to not receive redundant suggestions for troubleshooting the issue. Remember that questions asked on the internet are petitioning those more experienced (and potentially more busy) for their most valuable resource: time. It is crucial to respect the time of those you wish to engage with by carefully composing your message and making sure that the solutions are not simply a google search away, lest you communicate to those that help that you value their time less than a few minutes (or less!) of your own. This ettiquette should also be considered for you own sake, as precise and accurate descriptions of your current situation and what you are trying to achieve will aid you in receiving a useful response addressing the correct problem.

Here are some examples of good and bad questions:

A Bad Question

This is an example of a poorly asked question that may not result in anyone taking their time to respond. For starters, the title is simply “get file’s last modified date stamp in unix”. The title screams laziness from the first letter not being capitalized and fails to compose an actual question. It’s more of a segment of a question. From the title alone, I’m sure many developers can assume what is being asked, but the title itself does not necessarily entice one to respond. The body of the question also simply states: “I need to find the file last modified date stamp in Unix. Please help me with a solution” and is accompanied by a screenshot of some disembodied code and no additional details. This is the equivalent of saying, I am trying to find A, please spend your time explaining something to me that I probably should have just typed into a google search bar. The sheer lack of effort in the post seems like it would annoy someone who is capable of helping. They have omitted what operations they have previously tried with no avail and have abandoned grammar and pleasantries in their request. If they had simply stated something along the lines of: “I am struggling to find the file last modified date stamp in Unix and have tried A, B, and C. I have also searched for documentation but have not found any useful links that address my question. I would appreciate it greatly if anyone could shed light on my issue and save me a world of time and frustration.”, then they would likely not annoy and repel those that would likely be able to shed light on their issues.

Link to the question for those curious: Bad Question

A Good Question:

The question being discussed has a title that says, “How do I check out a remote Git branch”. At first glance, this seems like quite the generic, low-effort question, but it is likely one that is asked by a noobie and is also something that may be nostalgic for once-noobie, now-seasoned developers. Expanding the question reveals a concise but descriptive illustration of the issue at hand, detailing that a branch called “test” with “git push origin test” was pushed to a shared repository. The question’s author then describes the name of what he can see and then posits his problem: “How do I check out the remote test branch?” This is followed by two bullet-pointed lines of code that he’s tried in the command line and their outputs, which do not align with his desired outcome. In total, the question is two lines and two bullet points. The code is spaced out nicely so it is easy to read and it also provides a very clear description of the issue at hand, what has been tried (and their outcomes) and the desired (but not yet reached) effect. Though it is a noobie question, this shows prospective respondents that effort has been put into solving the problem and that the problem has been formatted in a legible and descriptive way so as to provide as much information as possible in the minimal amount of text. It is easy to

Link to the question for those curious: Good Question