Want a helpful answer? Ask a smart question

12 Sep 2019

The following link takes you to a demonstration of a “smart” question posted on Stack Overflow, an online community for developers.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11227809/why-is-processing-a-sorted-array-faster-than-processing-an-unsorted-array

Notice that although the question was asked 7 years ago, it is still active and has received 23395 votes, 22 answers and 1.4 million views. A well-thought-out question results in a relevant and engaging discussion. The user chose the right forum - question about processing arrays in a programming community – and expressed his question clearly without grammatical or spelling errors. In the posting, he includes his thought process and provides codes he tried on C++ and Java. In turn, the community contributed thorough and informative responses. There is a difference between taking the initiative to learn and demanding the answer. The community can see this; thus, they are more likely to share their knowledge and point him in the right direction.

You get what you give, so asking in a “dumb” way will mostly likely not lead to effective and efficient help. Refer to the following link for an example.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56618638/adding-same-marker-again-after-remove-android

This post was uploaded 2 months ago, and it has received -2 votes, 3 answers and 127 views. The user had even placed a bounty on the question because it was not receiving enough attention. What makes this an unappealing post? For one, the question was not explicit enough. This is evident from one of the replies, “I can’t understand what you expect to get as a result…” He does not provide prior inspection or experimentation of his question and just wants the answer given to him. He also does not use proper grammar and spelling. It does not help that the user lacks courtesy in his replies to other members trying to provide pointers. The Stack Overflow community is a great resource, but members will not waste their time answering questions that were not given effort by the person asking.