How to ask for help

Before formulating the question

  1. Formulate the problem for yourself.
  2. Search and research (related) existing questions and answers.

Formulation the question

Title

  1. Detailed but concise summary of your problem.
  2. Make it 1 sentence.
  3. Include error messages.
  4. Mention in what way your questions differs from already existing ones.
  5. Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!
  6. Write the title last.
  7. Always use English.
  8. Always mention the programming language.

Examples

   - Bad: [javascript] error message
   - Good: Why does the console not show message from console.log statemenr (error message: Syntax error)?

Body

  1. Introduce the problem.
  2. Mention any difficulties that have prevented you from solving this problem.
  3. Give only as much information as is necesarry.
  4. Include code. Your code examples should be…
    • Minimal – Use as little code as possible that still produces the same problem.
    • Complete – Provide all parts someone else needs to reproduce your problem in the question itself.
    • Reproducible – Test the code you're about to provide to make sure it reproduces the problem.
  5. Add comments to your code example to explain your thinking process.

Tags

  1. Include tags for:
    • programming language
    • library
    • specific API
  2. Format righly:
    • all lower case
    • replace spaces with hyphens
    • avoid punctuation
    • use both full words and abbreviations

After formulating the question

Proof-reading

  1. Check for spelling, grammar and punctuation.
  2. Make the formulation is structured lectured.
  3. Check is all the necesarry details are present.
  4. Avoid unnecesarry details and repeated text.
  5. Check if the title is still up-to-date.

Post the question and respond to feedback

  1. Make sure to guide the discussion the right way.
  2. Make sure to be ready to edit your question or include information they are asking for.
  3. Test (every) given solutions and give feedback to the developer.

And lastly, don't ever give up!