How-to Guide: Asking Forum Questions

Aside from the common mistake of not supplying the necessary code to debug a project, I see a lot of questions by users that are incomplete or lacking context. I am admittedly a newcomer when it comes to development, but I am naturally particular about grammar and logic.

Below, I've listed a few points that I think will help us all to communicate more effectively in the forums so that our questions will be more clearly understood and solved more quickly.

• Write A Clear Headline: You should give members a clear idea of what you’re having trouble with starting with the headline. Clarity will get more members working on your problem faster. “Help with HTML,” is too vague. “How do I nest unordered lists?” is a lot clearer.
• Be Specific: In the body of your post express exactly what you want to accomplish even if you don’t know how. “Please help with JavaScript” is horribly vague. While asking, “How do I change the color of my paragraph text with an onclick event?” is a lot more detailed.
• Pre-edit Your Questions: You can be specific without being long winded. Your question doesn't need to be as short as a twitter post, but getting your point across in 4 well written paragraphs instead of 12 unedited paragraphs will usually be more thoughtful, and precise
• Provide Markup: Don’t wait until someone asks you to provide code to reply with the appropriate markup. Be proactive! Dustin Matlock has provided an excellent cheat sheet for displaying the appropriate markup here. You can also find the forums’ Markdown Cheatsheet at the bottom of your forum page.