as we have grown to almost 1500 members now , and it is increasingly
difficult for moderators to review all messages, please ensure your
posts are clear with as much as possible information and include an
appropriate subject line (remeber to create a new thread, when you are
asking new question)
ThanQ!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Bathula Raghuram \(Mumbai - PIPING\)" <R.Bath...@ticb.com>
Date: Sep 12 2007, 3:28 pm
Subject: How to ask (or post a query) and get a quick and effective
reply from the members of this forum!
To: Materials & Welding
It's a bit lengthy, thought of posting on the web directly, but most
of
the members are not accessing the group home page frequently, so
sending
thro mail.
Before You Ask
Before asking try to find an answer by searching the archives of the
forum. It may find you an answer, and if not it will help you
formulate
a better question.
http://groups.google.com/group/materials-welding?hl=en
Or
http://materials-welding.blogspot.com
<http://materials-welding.blogspot.com/>
We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can
learn from the answers.
Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get
hasty answers or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that
having
put thought and effort into solving your problem before seeking help,
the more likely you are to actually get help.
Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not; you aren't,
after all, paying for the service. You will earn an answer, if you
earn
it, by asking a substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking
question
- one that implicitly contributes to the experience of the community
rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.
When You Ask
Be sensitive in choosing where you ask your question. You are likely
to
be ignored, if you:
* post your question to a forum where it's off topic
* post a personal e-mail to somebody who is neither an
acquaintance of yours nor personally responsible for solving your
problem
Shooting off an e-mail to a person or forum which you are not familiar
with is risky at best. For example, do not assume that the author of
an
informative webpage wants to be your free consultant. Do not make
optimistic guesses about whether your question will be welcome - if
you're unsure, send it elsewhere, or refrain from sending it at all.
Use meaningful, specific subject headers
The subject header is your golden opportunity to attract qualified
experts' attention in around 50 characters or fewer. Don't waste it on
babble like "Please help me" (let alone "PLEASE HELP ME!!!!" messages
with subjects like that get discarded by reflex). Don't try to impress
us with the depth of your anguish; use the space for a super-concise
problem description instead.
Looser:
HELP! Need welding procedure!
Smart:
How to weld overlay a Duplex SS?
Smarter:
UNS31803 weld overlay on A105, What are the essential parameters?
More generally, imagine looking at the index of an archive of
questions,
with just the subject lines showing. Make your subject line reflect
your
question well enough that the next guy searching the archive with a
question similar to yours will be able to follow the thread to an
answer
rather than posting the question again.
If you ask a question in a reply, be sure to change the subject line
to
indicate that you're asking a question. A Subject line that looks like
"Re: or "Fw: is less likely to attract useful amounts of attention.
Also, pare quotation of previous messages to the minimum consistent
with
cluing in new readers.
Do not simply hit reply to a list message in order to start an
entirely
new thread. This will limit your audience.
Changing the subject is not sufficient. Me, and probably other mail
readers, looks at other information in the e-mail's headers to assign
it
to a thread, not the subject line. Instead start an entirely new e-
mail.
On Web forums the rules of good practice are slightly different,
because
messages are usually much more tightly bound to specific discussion
threads and often invisible outside those threads. Changing the
subject
when asking a question in reply is not essential. Not all forums even
allow separate subject lines on replies, and nearly nobody reads them
when they do. However, asking a question in a reply is a dubious
practice in itself, because it will only be seen by those who are
watching this thread. So, unless you are sure you want to ask only the
people currently active in the thread, start a new one.
Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
Expressing your question clearly and well is important. If you can't
be
bothered to do that, we can't be bothered to pay attention. Spend the
extra effort to polish your language. It doesn't have to be stiff or
formal - in fact, hacker culture values informal, slangy and humorous
language used with precision. But it has to be precise; there has to
be
some indication that you're thinking and paying attention.
Spell, punctuate, and capitalize correctly. Don't confuse "its" with
"it's", "loose" with "lose", or "discrete" with "discreet". Don't TYPE
IN ALL CAPS; this is read as shouting and considered rude. (All-smalls
is only slightly less annoying, as it's difficult to read. Alan Cox
can
get away with it, but you can't.)
Be precise and informative about your problem
* Describe the symptoms of your problem carefully and clearly.
* Describe the research you did to try and understand the
problem before you asked the question.
* Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down
the
problem yourself before you asked the question.
Describe your problem's symptoms in chronological order
Be explicit about your question
Open-ended questions tend to be perceived as open-ended time sinks.
Those people most likely to be able to give you a useful answer are
also
the busiest people (if only because they take on the most work
themselves). People like that are allergic to open-ended time sinks,
thus they tend to be allergic to open-ended questions.
You are more likely to get a useful response if you are explicit about
what you want respondents to do (provide pointers, send info, check
your
patch, whatever). This will focus their effort and implicitly put an
upper bound on the time and energy a respondent must allocate to
helping
you. This is good.
To understand the world the experts live in, think of expertise as an
abundant resource and time to respond as a scarce one. The less of a
time commitment you implicitly ask for, the more likely you are to get
an answer from someone really good and really busy.
Don't flag your question as "Urgent", even if it is for you
That's your problem, not ours. Claiming urgency is very likely to be
counter-productive: most will simply delete such messages as rude and
selfish attempts to elicit immediate and special attention.
If you find this mysterious, re-read the rest of this how-to
repeatedly
until you understand it before posting anything at all.
Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Be courteous. Use "Please" and "Thanks for your attention" or "Thanks
for your consideration". Make it clear you appreciate the time people
spend helping you for free. Politeness does increase your chances of
getting a useful answer.
Follow up with a brief note on the solution (The Most Important)
Send a note after the problem has been solved to all who helped you;
let
them know how it came out and thank them again for their help. If the
problem attracted general interest, it's appropriate to post the
follow-up here.
Optimally, the reply should be to the thread started by the original
question posting, and should have 'FIXED', 'RESOLVED' or an equally
obvious tag in the subject line. On mailing lists with fast
turnaround,
a potential respondent who sees a thread about "Problem X" ending with
"Problem X - FIXED" knows not to waste his/her time even reading the
thread (unless (s)he) personally finds Problem X interesting) and can
therefore use that time solving a different problem.
Your follow-up doesn't have to be long and involved; a simple "Howdy -
it was a failed network cable! Thanks, everyone. - abc" would be
better
than nothing. In fact, a short and sweet summary is better than a long
dissertation unless the solution has real technical depth. Say what
action solved the problem, but you need not replay the whole
troubleshooting sequence.
For problems with some depth, it is appropriate to post a summary of
the
troubleshooting history. Describe your final problem statement.
Describe
what worked as a solution, and indicate avoidable blind alleys after
that. The blind alleys should come after the correct solution and
other
summary material, rather than turning the follow-up into a detective
story. Name the names of people who helped you; you'll make friends
that
way.
Besides being courteous and informative, this sort of follow-up will
help others searching the forum to know exactly which solution helped
you and thus may also help them.
Last, and not least, this sort of follow-up helps everybody who
assisted
feel a satisfying sense of closure about the problem. Problem
narratives
that trail off into unresolved nothingness are frustrating things. The
goodwill that scratching that itch earns you will be very, very
helpful
to you next time you need to pose a question.
Consider how you might be able to prevent others from having the same
problem in the future. Ask yourself if a documentation or FAQ would
help, and if the answer is yes send that to the group.
This sort of good follow-up behavior is actually more important than
conventional politeness. It's how you get a reputation for playing
well
with others, which can be a very valuable asset.
How To Interpret Answers
If you don't understand...
If you don't understand the answer, do not immediately bounce back a
demand for clarification. Use the same tools that you used to try and
answer your original question (Books, FAQs, the Web, skilled friends)
to
understand the answer. Then, if you still need to ask for
clarification,
exhibit what you have learned.
Dealing with rudeness
When you perceive rudeness, try to react calmly. If someone is really
acting out, it is very likely a senior person on the forum will call
him
or her on it. If that doesn't happen and you lose your temper, it is
likely that the person you lose it at was behaving within the
community's norms and you will be considered at fault. This will hurt
your chances of getting the information or help you want.
In the next section, we'll talk about a different issue; the kind of
"rudeness" you'll see when you misbehave.
On Not Reacting Like A Loser
When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the
experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies,
scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's
employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you do:
Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and appropriate.
Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by
people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that
all
criticism should have been conveyed via private e-mail: That's not how
it works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally insulted
when someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or that his
views differ. Those are loser attitudes.
Exaggeratedly "friendly" (in that fashion) or useful: Pick one.
If You Can't Get An Answer
If you can't get an answer, please don't take it personally that we
don't feel we can help you. Sometimes the members of the asked group
may
simply not know the answer. No response is not the same as being
ignored, though admittedly it's hard to spot the difference from
outside.
In general, simply re-posting your question is a bad idea. This will
be
seen as pointlessly annoying. Have patience: the person with your
answer
may be in a different time-zone and asleep. Or it may be that your
question wasn't well-formed to begin with.
There are other sources of help you can go to, often sources better
adapted to a novice's needs.
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way
Be gentle. Problem-related stress can make people seem rude or stupid
even when they're not.
Reply to a first offender off-line. There is no need of public
humiliation for someone who may have made an honest mistake. A real
newbie may not know how to search archives or where the FAQ is stored
or
posted.
If you don't know for sure, say so! A wrong but authoritative-sounding
answer is worse than none at all. Don't point anyone down a wrong path
simply because it's fun to sound like an expert. Be humble and honest;
set a good example for both the querent and your peers.
If you can't help, don't hinder. Don't make jokes about procedures
that
could trash the user's item - the poor chap might interpret these as
instructions.
Ask probing questions to elicit more details. If you're good at this,
the querent will learn something - and so might you. Try to turn the
bad
question into a good one; remember we were all newbies once.
Help your community learn from the question. When you field a good
question, ask yourself "How would the relevant documentation or FAQ
have
to change so that nobody has to answer this again?".
If you did research to answer the question, demonstrate your skills
rather than writing as though you pulled the answer out of your butt.
Answering one good question is like feeding a hungry person one meal,
but teaching them research skills by example is teaching them to grow
food for a lifetime.
Thank you all and more suggestions are welcome
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to materials-welding@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to materials-welding-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group's bolg at http://materials-welding.blogspot.com/
The views expressed/exchnaged in this group are members personel views and meant for educational purposes only, Users must take their own decisions w.r.t. applicable code/standard/contract documents.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
No comments:
Post a Comment