Smart Questions, Better Answers
11 Sep 2024
Smart Questions, Better Answers
When asking questions, you may notice how asking a simple question gets a simple answer while asking a more complicated, detailed question gets you an answer that is detailed, and maybe complicated. The same applies for “smart questions”. A “smart question” is a question that shows that a person is willing to learn from others and is considerate of a responder’s time.
Asking Smart Questions
What is a smart question? A smart question is a question that is specific so responders know what you want, and shows that you are thoughtful of other’s time. It also shows that you are willing to learn more. After reading Eric Raymond’s How to ask questions the smart way, some important things to consider before asking your question are:
- Find an answer by searching in archives of forums or mailing lists you plan on posting to.
- Search the web for your answer.
- Read the manual for an answer.
- Read an FAQ for an answer.
- Find an answer by experimentation or inspection.
- Ask a skilled friend for an answer.
- Find an answer by reading source code (if you are a programmer). Doing these things and letting others know that you have done these things will tell potential responders that you have done your part by spending time trying to figure it out on your own. This shows other people what you have learned so far while trying to find a solution and also that you’re not being lazy. Some questions can be solved simply by looking on the internet, so to avoid wasting people’s time when you can solve you question by doing exactly that, you’ll more than likely get people to answer your question. For example, this person asks about setting a default serialization option for reference handlers. I thought this could be considered a smart question because they tell us what they know so far in their current problem and provide us some code with it. Towards the end, they also notify readers that he already tried overriding something in their code, but it still didn’t work for them. The responses for this question have been very helpful by explaining other ways to solve the problem. The responses even provided some code to be used to help.
Improving a Question
So far, we have gone over what a smart question is and how we can determine if a question is a smart question. What about not so smart questions? How do we know if a question is in that category? A not so smart question is a question that does not follow any of the previous points above, or shows a lack in research or attempt to solving it on their own first. For instance, another person from StackOverflow sent in a question asking how to read inputs as numbers. For this question, this person was currently getting input as strings instead of numbers so they needed help to figure out how to do that. Some may consider this as a not so smart question because they could easily have searched online using the same question before putting it out on a forum for other people to answer. The person asking the question also hadn’t clarified whether or not they did try some other solutions or gone over the process they did to try and solve their problem, so it just seems like they got lazy and came over to StackOverflow for answers. The reason why it’s important to make sure we don’t ask not so smart questions because to responders, it feels like we are wasting their time by having them answer something when an answer can be found elsewhere. On StackOverflow, people voluntarily answer these questions, so they are putting in their own time to help give solutions to these questions. There were a few responses, all of them used int() to convert the string responses to integers or numbers. Had they searched online themselves before coming to StackOverflow, they probably would’ve found a working solution. I did some research myself to see how easily they could have found their answer online; within 3 seconds of searching, I found an answer. By taking their question and pasting it into a search engine such as Google, I was able to find many helpful sources with potential solutions.
Something to Think About
There will always be a time where we encounter a roadblock in our code so we may end up asking others for help. That’s fine! However, when we do ask questions, we need to make sure they are smart questions. By making sure that we are specific about what we want, it’ll help others get an idea of how to approach the problem and provide helpful solutions. It’s also important that we make attempts on our own first before asking because the answer may be simple to find on our own. Doing research on our own shows that we are willing to learn and that we are not lazy. Whenever you consider putting questions out of other forums or platforms, remember that these responders do not have to answer, but they do because they want to help so they volunteer their own time to help others. This time should not go to waste, so make sure to create smart questions so their time can be valued.