A hacker by the name of Eric Raymond published a comprehensive guide to asking questions “the smart way”. For the whole article: Asking Smart Questions
The point of this guide was to educate people on how to ask questions in ways that quickly and effectively conveyed one’s problem in a manner that would allow capable members of the community to concisely assist with troubleshooting. The guide covers expected topics such as using proper spelling and grammar, being terse and to-the-point when possible, and maintaining a professional level of courtesy. The guide also emphasizes heavily on the importance of attempting to solve the problem on one’s own first. Additionally, once one has researched the problem and attempted as many ways as he or she can figure to attempt to solve the problem, he or she then includes all means and steps taken that did not resolve the issue to be contained within the post petitioning for help. It is crucial that one demonstrates within his or her post that a serious attempt was made to resolve the issue on one’s own lest the post be ignored or worse, flamed upon. In a similar vein, it is important to not just expect an answer – for other people to do the work for you. It is best to ask for pointers or ways in which you can improve your own research and testing to arrive at the solution on your own, when applicable. And no matter what the issue may be, it is best to assume that you are the cause of the problem – it’s more amicable and shows some humility (and it probably is your fault too).
Even if one follows all of the steps on how to write an eloquent request completed with a thorough and meaningful subject line, every question must be posted in a relevant space. Various websites, forums, discussion boards, and mailing lists are intended for specific topics of discussion and are perused by specific demographics or people. Take this example:
Subject - “How useful is JavaScript without its third-party libraries i.e. JQuery etc? [closed]” Wrong space
In the above example, the author of the post is requesting a question that is likely to yield opinionated answers and so was closed by the moderators for it was deemed off-topic and inappropriate. This is a common practice for out-of-place posts and should be learned from.
An example of asking a question the smart way looks more like this: Subject - “unexpected strict mode reserved word — yield? Node v0.11, harmony, es6” The right way
In this post the author establishes the environment and what the exact issue is. The author even ends the initial post with “Am I dong something wrong here?” This user acknowledges that he or she is likely responsible for the problem and goes on to share the specific code that is not functioning as expected. This question was asked in a terse and intelligent way and was rewarded with a swift and concise response which answered the question. The author also took the time to thank the individual responsible for the answer which venerates the person who took the time to investigate and respond to the plea for help on account of his or her own generous spirit.
Asking questions the smart way yields smart answers – It’s as simple as that, folks.