Why Asking Good Questions Matters

05 May 2017

From the article How To Ask Questions The Smart Way, I concluded 4 main characteristics of a good question. Firstly, the question needs to be specific and concise. The description of the question should address all specific details that could potentially make the answer different, yet it should be concise enough for the commenter to read it quickly. Secondly, the question should show that you are an aggressive learner. We should show that we’ve tried your best to solve the problem, and will be involved in finding the solution. Thirdly, we must try to make the responder’s job easy. We can make it easy for the commenters to see the problem by pointing to a specific part of the problem, for example, a specific error message, or a specific line of code in a program. Responding to our problem should be convinient as well. Lastly, we should show the value of answering the question, by asking something that has not yet had an answer online.

To better understand what kind of questions are considered to be good, and what are considered to be bad, I’ve searched through stack overflow to pull out an example for each. This question is considered to be a good question for the following reasons:

  1. He specified the relevant area of his question in the title, “android SDK”
  2. In the description, he showed that he has done enough researched on the problem, by saying “I know that…, but…”. This showed that he has tried to solve the problem
  3. he specify what he’d already done, and he pointed at the specific step, where it started to go wrong.
  4. Then he showed his specific development environment, since the development environment can as make a difference in problems like this.
  5. The question is easy to read, as it’s description is featured with neat layout. He used bullet points, and he sepcifically restated and bolded what he was trying to asking at the end of the question, so that people don’t get lost while reading the description.

This question is considered a bad example for several reasons shown below.

  1. The question contain grammar errors, he started the question with lower case. This simply make people feel that he doesn’t care enough to deserve an answer.
  2. He didn’t seem to be an aggressive learner. He didn’t show he’d tried to solve the problem on his own.
  3. This question seem to be too basic, answering them wouldn’t give much value to the community.
  4. He didn’t describe in detail what the problem was, and what he was really trying to solve.

By comparing number of comments, votes, and answers of those two questions above, we see how we ask a question does make a significant difference on how the members of the community respond to the question. A good question is more likely to be voted, answered and referred to in the future. The answer to the good question above shows that by being specific and concise about problem to be solved, the commenter could quickly refer to his own experience and provide an answer that can go directly to solve the problem. The comment of the answer also showed the respond was satisfying. The participants in this page seeem to be polite to each other. It creates a good discussion atmosphere in general. In the bad example above, the question was commented to improve the quality of question. And since the question itself doesn’t specify the pronlem, even though there is answer provided by someone, we can’t make sure if the answer is helpful or not.

In General, a good question can initiate a good discussion, which can not only help the person, asking, to solve the problem, it helps to bring values to other community members as well. Showing our involvement in solving the problem helps to create a positive discussion atmosphere, since everyone want to work with smart and aggressive person. Be specific in describing the problem helps to get the answer faster, since other community members don’t have to spend meaningless time to try what was achieved already. The commenters can go directly to the point to provide an answer.