Others say, there is no such thing as a dumb question, so does that mean all questions are “smart”, or are there even any smart questions at all?
I always struggle asking questions because in general, it’s hard… to ask questions. Especially in a room full of “smart” people that makes one hesitant to ask a question without overthinking that the people around them will judge them and think that their question is dumb.
We are living in a century where almost everything is easy to access and search engines are a thing that makes it easier for us to find our answers online. However, we do still encounter difficulties in finding answers to our curiosity or problems in life or even for work even if almost everything is on the internet. As a Computer Engineering student taking programming classes, I encounter tons of problems with my work. That is why I rely on search engines to find answers or solutions that could help me solve my problem, but I have never asked a question online like in StackOverflow because I might get bashed or banned if they think my questions are “dumb.”
Normally when we have questions, we try to find the answers or solutions by checking our surroundings, thinking for a solution, and looking for FAQs. This also applies to asking questions online, especially in forums like StackOverflow. Before asking our questions, we have to try to solve them ourselves, find the answers by searching online, looking at tutorials, and checking existing similar questions that could help in our problem. However, there will be times when we really can’t find a way to solve our problems. Thus, that’s the time we can try asking forums like StackOverflow for help.
When asking questions in an online public forum, we should be sensitive and careful in what we ask. Make sure that you are asking in the right type of forum for the same type or topic of question we are asking. Keep your questions appropriate for the readers of that specific forum. The questions should also be easy to understand. What I meant by that is that for our questions to be easy for the reader to understand what we are asking for.
For programming questions, especially when you have a question for a code or an error, don’t just copy and paste the whole program and then just ask “Help”, and/or post a screenshot of your code! It’ll be better for the readers and volunteers to check and help you figure out your problem. However, it is better to keep in mind that they are busy people and could do more work for us as they are trying to share their knowledge in a way that will be easy for us to understand. That is why if we post the whole program with no explanation, they probably wouldn’t even bother to look at it and just ignore it. That is why explaining what the code does and should do, asking specific questions with referencing specific lines of code will help tremendously in making the readers understand your question. Here is an example of a StackOverflow post that has blocks of code posted but still has an explanation of what it does, what they want thick is the problem, and what they want to ask in the forum.
In addition, never post a screenshot of your code. That makes it harder for the reader to copy and paste and try solving your problem. What’s worse is that if you wrote your code, screenshotted it, and posted it in the forum, and then your handwriting is a little bit hard to read, it will just make the readers uninterested in your post and might even ban you in the forum. There is this popular example of a StackOverflow question that is a handwritten version of their code. This is still up in the forum since it has a significant history which still sets as an example for everyone in the future to avoid doing.
After reading through Eris Raymond’s article on How to ask questions the smart way, I learned what to, how to, and where to ask my questions. However, I am still scared to ask questions online especially in a forum like StackOverflow, that is why I will just try my best to find the answers by myself, and try to solve them. I do think that there is no such thing as a dumb question rather people have different levels of knowledge and people might think it’s dumb but for some, it is something they struggle about. Similarly, there is no smart question. However, there is a smart way and not a smart way of asking questions and that is when these guidelines come in to help us ask the right questions to the right people in the right environment.