A bit of advice on writing good questions

If you use one of the following phrases in your post:

I hope that's clear
I guess I didn't explain that very well
This is hard to explain
I hope you can understand this LOL!

Then it is probably worthwhile to go back to see if you can explain your question more thoroughly.

I think we should put our heads together and write a tutorial on how to write a good question.

I suppose Rule #1 should be to use a good subject. Easy to say, not so easy to implement. I can give some examples even if I can't explain it.

Need help - worst possible subject

Need help with SUMIFS - better

Need help with SIMIFS from another workbook - even better

Rule #1.5 - It's a corollary to Rule #1 - if you can get your wording right, Google is your friend. Look for a solution that has already been posted. Or at least read what other people have said about it and it may give you ideas on how to phrase your question and what factors may or may not be important.

Rule #2 - Attach a sample workbook. This is probably my biggest peeve. There are questions that can be answered without having to include a workbook: maybe about one in 20. The other 95% of the time, a workbook helps lot and in most cases, the issue can't be resolved at all without a workbook. People are more likely to respond to a thread with a sample workbook. People, including self, either do not have time or inclination to type in data that the poster probably already has.

Rule #3 - Include good data that can illustrate your point. There should be enough data to exercise the logic. If there are exceptions, then include at least one example of each exception. You should have enough data to produce a reasonable output, but we don't need all 750,000 records. Anywhere from a dozen to a hundred records is usually good enough.

Rule #4 - Before and after. Even if you can't produce the result you want, you can create what you want the results to look like manually. Otherwise, how do we know we got it right? It is OK to use pictures for this purpose, but a sample worksheet is probably better.

Rule #5 - Note cross posts. If you are casting your net on every board in hopes of an answer, that's OK, but provide links so we don't waste time answering a question that has already been answered somewhere else.

Rule #6 - 'Fess up. I try to gauge where people's competence level is by the number of posts. However, this is not a reliable indicator. If you are a total novice, that's OK. If you are at an intermediary level, that tells me something too. I like to provide an explanation that doesn't "fly over the user's head" but on the other hand, I don't want to bore them with information they already know.

Rule #7 - Got an error? Record it! Provide a screen shot. Tell us what you had to do to cause the error to happen.

Rule #8 - Tell us what you've tried already. Sometimes we'll think, "Well, of course that won't work." other times it will be "That should work! Why doesn't it?"

Rule #9 - Use a good profile. The version of Office that you are using DOES matter. Also location can be important. Regional settings may matter; they may even affect the code. Once I wrote:

Please Login or Register  to view this content.

Works great in most English-speaking countries, but does not fly in the Nederlands.

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Since jaar is year over there. (I'm learning a lot from all over the map on this board)
Rule #10
Bump judiciously. Many of us responders go first to the unanswered bin - those are posts with zero responses. If you responded to your own post, then you are not on this list.
Rule #11 - Read the rules as posted on the site.


OK, that's off the top of my head. It obviously needs improvement. I am sure I've forgotten things. I am sure there are things that need to be expanded. I'm a big boy and I can take the hits so feel free to criticize.

To which I add, "Give me a screen capture of the highlighted line of code in the debugger."

I believe that experts and gurus can add canned replies and make them visible to all. It's via the user profile.

Settings > Your Canned Replies (bottom left).

I will be glad to write something up and clean it up a bit after I get a bit more feedback. Also I need to search my own memory - I used to write specifications, so there's some stuff in the archives between my ears that I need to pull out. Give me another week

Think you'll find that the worst offenders for such offenses are the type of posters least likely to read threads such as this...

Originally Posted by Olly

Think you'll find that the worst offenders for such offenses are the type of posters least likely to read threads such as this...

So then just include this link.

Originally Posted by dflak

So then just include this link.

And expect plenty of tl;dr style response...

Whilst I agree wholeheartedly about "it doesn't work", I don't think that failing to respond to certain phrases that are written by non-native English speakers would be particularly helpful. Whilst I am sure you are joking, let's just consider for a moment how these things come to be.

"I need a code" may be written that way simply because the indefinite article is used in the speaker's native tongue where we would use the partitive article, or it is just a guess on their part. "Dears" is just a translation of "habibi" and its variants, an Arabic word that is a term of endearment used frequently by both sexes, and would probably better translate as "friends" or "mates" or even "team" in the context of these forums. And, finally, please let us not forget that these people's command of English, however poor it may be, is usually infinitely better than our (native English speakers') command of their language.

So, discrimination based on the member's command of English, however irritating we may find it, is not something that I would entertain, even in jest.

(I am a linguist and a language teacher in real life.)

Hear, hear, Ali!

I work with it. Some posters whose native language isn't English do a lot better job posting than some of the rest of us.

I do think it is important to know from what country a poster is posting, since regional settings DO matter in some cases. Also I like to know whether I am dealing with Brit-speak, Aussie English or Brooklynese (my native language).

When I detect that someone may have difficulty with English, I tailor my response. I try not to use colloquialisms and I try to use simple declarative sentences that I hope are easy to translate.

Originally Posted by 6StringJazzer

My wife is Egyptian and everybody calls everybody habibti or habibi (f. and m.) and it is usually translated as "dear" ...

At first glamce, I thought you said "Hobbit" - I can live with being called that although I am a bit tall for the part.

OK time for a serious post. I promised I would collect the collective wisdom and consolidate it in one post. The attached word document is my attempt. I am still open to comments and edits.

you spelled the document name wrong LOL

Unless you are fairly certain what is causing the problem, state the problem and don’t beg for a specific solution.

I'd suggest you rephrase this -- it assumes the reader knows the phrase "begging the question", and if they don't, it seems... kinda rude? Maybe explicitly point out that it's a known-and-named fallacy?

I dunno if it's a good way to say it exactly, but I think most of the time, titles are better off without any verbs in them. "Need Help" is perfectly useless because it's like, yea, that's why you started a thread in the first place, it's practically the same as titling your thread "this is a thread".

But then in all your examples, you leave "help" dangling on the front even thou we know that implicitly just from it being a new thread in the "Help" section.
"I need help with VBA form-filling" as a complete sentence.
The only part that needs to be in the title is "VBA form-filling", like that.


It might be good to have a list of Popular Subjects, which people have trouble with:
Boolean Logic (If, And, Or)
Conditional Formatting
Timesheets LOL
Lookups
And then say "if your question is one of these, call it that, and then describe the particular bit you're stuck on."


If you're going to push adding a workbook, then I think it might help to add that you shouldn't post just a workbook, where the post says "see attached workbook for problem"? That's trouble in a different direction. And I feel like "include a workbook" and "include good data" have a ton of overlap, maybe acknowledge that?




I think we're definitely going to see an effect where the people that can take the time to walk through this, will very quickly get to being proficient enough that they can answer their own questions with judicious searching on google or whatever.

Thanks for the comments. As I said, I am open to editing. I will see how to work this in. I especially like your suggestion of leaving "need help with" out of subjects. It can be safely assumed that's why one is here. Also it leaves more "real estate" to describe the issue.

reginal settings

Please explain

Regional Settings. I need to requisition skinnier fingers.

Originally Posted by ben_hensel

It might be good to have a list of Popular Subjects, which people have trouble with:
Boolean Logic (If, And, Or)
Conditional Formatting
Timesheets LOL
Lookups
And then say "if your question is one of these, call it that, and then describe the particular bit you're stuck on."

I think these are good ideas, but I think that each area deserves a separate post and then this document can cross reference the links. I can include something like, "If you are experiencing a problem in one of these areas, check out these links."

Anyway, the revised edition is attached.

After "Reading the Rules," posting a good subject is the next most important thing. I seem to be able to do a decent enough job of it myself, but darn, if I can't come up with good examples or in this case, bad examples.

I think what I need to do is look at what is posted, pick the best and worst, change the wording enough to make them "anonymous" so we don't pick on anyone and maybe go from there.

Pete, re: Your Suggestions on How To: aren't these in the canned replies? At least some of them are.

If Americans had to speak a different language every time they crossed a state border, then they would probably be multi-lingual too. However when the predominant language for 1,000 miles around is English, there is little incentive to learning another language. I once had fluency in French, but when I moved too far from Quebec to pick up the radio broadcasts, I lost it.

Originally Posted by 6StringJazzer

Have you ever heard a New Yorker try to talk to a Alabaman?

Ya'll. (LOL )

Less so nowadays, though, Kyle. Television has had a rather homogenising effect on accents over the past 25 years, with American and Aussie (the 'Neighbours' effect) inflections beginning to enter into British dialects (e.g. the way that we now all turn statements into questions by raising the tone of voice towards the end of the phrase - this came as a direct result of Aussie soaps flooding British TV in the 80s). That and the fact that so many of our young people go away to university nowadays, which is a place where accents are known to become flattened. It won't be very long before the really heavy and localised vocabulary laden dialects die out completely - we are a couple of generations away from that. It's sad in a way, but that's how language develops. It does not stand still.

I'm a Noo Yawker (Brooklyn actually) - on my first trip south of the Mason-Dixon line in 1970, I found that I had to "pull my mouth out of afterburner." I had a tendency to speak at a rate of about 120 words per minute with gusts up to 150. I had to slow down by 50%.

Since then I have been all over the world to places where English is supposedly the main language. Of those places, the one that I had the most difficulty with was Australia. However, I've not been to Scotland yet. I do decent Brit-speak in that I have relatives that live in Ireland, and although they do not admit it, their language is very similar. For example, I've learned that "half six" is not three despite what I learned in grade school and I do know the difference between a boot and a bonnet.

OMG, some this stuff is funner than anything in the joke thread...

And as others have voice already, one of the worst replies to a helping post is... I tried it, but it doesn't work. It can take a few back-and-forth posts before we clear up what exactly is (or isn't) happening.

@6StringJazzer, yeah that list is hilarious.