March 27, 2013 at 2:03 pm
Seems like this article is like old news, not only do I see this mentioned quite often in forums when I have time to check questions, but now its yet again a featured article. I believe this is kinda common sense, no wonder I don't spend much time on this site...
March 27, 2013 at 2:08 pm
churlbut (3/27/2013)
Seems like this article is like old news, not only do I see this mentioned quite often in forums when I have time to check questions, but now its yet again a featured article. I believe this is kinda common sense, no wonder I don't spend much time on this site...
Perhaps if you actually spent time around the forums you would see that most people don't bother to post enough information to get their questions answered. It gets mentioned time and time again because people don't post this type of stuff.
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Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.
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Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/
March 27, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Sean Lange (3/27/2013)
churlbut (3/27/2013)
Seems like this article is like old news, not only do I see this mentioned quite often in forums when I have time to check questions, but now its yet again a featured article. I believe this is kinda common sense, no wonder I don't spend much time on this site...Perhaps if you actually spent time around the forums you would see that most people don't bother to post enough information to get their questions answered. It gets mentioned time and time again because people don't post this type of stuff.
Honestly someone could put together a Pass Summit presentation "How to ask questions on a forum." and it would get a fair amount of attendance. Unfortunately the people that attended would be the ones who already ask useful questions.
Kenneth FisherI was once offered a wizards hat but it got in the way of my dunce cap.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/[/url]For better answers on performance questions, click on the following... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/[/url]Link to my Blog Post --> www.SQLStudies.com[/url]
March 27, 2013 at 2:49 pm
churlbut (3/27/2013)
Seems like this article is like old news, not only do I see this mentioned quite often in forums when I have time to check questions, but now its yet again a featured article. I believe this is kinda common sense, no wonder I don't spend much time on this site...
Would you rather we pull answers out of our **** instead? Many times we are asked questions with so little to work with yet people get offended when we ask for clarification. Sorry if we, the volunteers willing to try to help, can't answer every question based solely on poorly asked questions.
March 27, 2013 at 9:49 pm
churlbut (3/27/2013)
Seems like this article is like old news, not only do I see this mentioned quite often in forums when I have time to check questions, but now its yet again a featured article. I believe this is kinda common sense, no wonder I don't spend much time on this site...
BWAAAA-HAAA!!!! If you read the headline, it clearly states "(first published: 2007/11/27)" so as of right now, it's 5 years and 5 months old which means that you've actually made a gross understatement about it being "old news". 😉 I absolutely agree with your statement that is should be common sense, yet, people still don't get it right. Apparently, common sense isn't so common.
I don't see what SQLServerCentral.com's decision to republish this article for the benefit of those that don't know how to post a question correctly has to do with the amount of time you've spent here but, since you brought it up, which site do you spend your time at and what's your handle there? I'd love to see where you spend your time.
--Jeff Moden
June 5, 2013 at 7:38 am
All,
Good points everyone on the perils and pitfalls of getting a well formed question.
I would like to also add that when answering the questions that the some thought and effort has been put into the answer. Often times, especially in the "stack" forums, I see a link to an article that doesn't even come close to the answer or an answer that doesn't even come close to solving the problem.
Also, the level of arrogance of some of the "MVP's" is amazing. From the "how dare you ask a simple question" to outright disdain for people, who might not be at the same level as the high rated people of the forums.
I appreciate that "what would you use" type of questions like "stored procedures vs. inline SQL", "WPF vs. winforms", "in memory vs. tempory tables", etc are not closed and shut down as not being a "real question". A thread where people can give their opinions can really shine some light on a difficult subject.
I really appreciate the level of knowledge and help on this site that is missing on some of the other forums. Stay the course everyone.
Anton
June 5, 2013 at 1:16 pm
aochss (6/5/2013)
All,Good points everyone on the perils and pitfalls of getting a well formed question.
I would like to also add that when answering the questions that the some thought and effort has been put into the answer. Often times, especially in the "stack" forums, I see a link to an article that doesn't even come close to the answer or an answer that doesn't even come close to solving the problem.
Also, the level of arrogance of some of the "MVP's" is amazing. From the "how dare you ask a simple question" to outright disdain for people, who might not be at the same level as the high rated people of the forums.
I appreciate that "what would you use" type of questions like "stored procedures vs. inline SQL", "WPF vs. winforms", "in memory vs. tempory tables", etc are not closed and shut down as not being a "real question". A thread where people can give their opinions can really shine some light on a difficult subject.
I really appreciate the level of knowledge and help on this site that is missing on some of the other forums. Stay the course everyone.
Anton
Absolutely agreed. I do try to keep in mind that people that are asking the questions are sometimes really under the proverbial gun and that email and forum posts leave a lot to be desired when it comes to the tone of a post.
I'll also state that some folks that ask the questions are downright rude or whiney in their requests and responses. For example, take a look at the quoted response I got from someone on this very article in my previous post to this one. I've actually seen both sides spend more time arguing an almost totally unrelated point that it would have taken to read a question or response, evaluate what was said, and respond properly and thoughtfully (or just say, "I dunno").
Arrogance and poor manners comes from both sides of the house (on every forum... not just this one and some are a whole lot worse than this one ever was or ever will be) and I'll be the first to agree that there's really no room for it by the people requesting the help nor the respondents. That, not withstanding, everyone does need to realize that even a saint can have a bad day and a lot can be lost in the written rather than the verbal word.
--Jeff Moden
June 5, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Great article, Jeff..
Awesomely presented and well explained article about presenting and putting your question in correct way.
Thanks Jeff.
June 5, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Could you add another paragraph to the article with the directions for putting code in the scrolling window? It would be great to have those posting tips in the same article with your excellent explanation of how to generate test tables and data.
Thank you
Rosalind
June 5, 2013 at 4:08 pm
pchirags (6/5/2013)
Great article, Jeff..Awesomely presented and well explained article about presenting and putting your question in correct way.
Thanks Jeff.
Thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciate it.
--Jeff Moden
June 5, 2013 at 4:10 pm
rphilips (6/5/2013)
Could you add another paragraph to the article with the directions for putting code in the scrolling window? It would be great to have those posting tips in the same article with your excellent explanation of how to generate test tables and data.Thank you
Rosalind
Excellent suggestion, Rosalind. I'll add it to the article and resubmit it for republishing. Thanks for stopping by.
--Jeff Moden
June 5, 2013 at 4:21 pm
I'll be honest and admit that I did not read the 17 pages of comments over the last 6 years.
I will tell you that I agree with you 100%. I am a mixed developer working in Sql Manage, Visual Studio, and Dreamweaver, so I get to throw in chunks of code into various webpages and the first thing I do is to do a code formatting so that I can see what I am working in.
Low and behold some non-tech person (like a copywriter) wants to change how things are displayed and it breaks. I get the "help me" call and open up the file to find all the code has been left-justified, or the text editor says my collapse points have changed
I won't even look at the code until it is reformated, and then I will rerun it to confirm the breakage and get the line number of the error.
It is also helpful as I have quite a few designers who don't like closing their html tags.
So... thank you
June 6, 2013 at 4:38 am
Speaking of formatting code, I have a colleague who gets very confused when he has to format his code.
The most amazing example I ran into recently was in the use of a complex and long series of nested case statements.
He just writes it from left to right and when he reaches the end of the screen he hits return (he hates when the editor does that).
And yes, he has a wide screen - wider than mine - which adds some special effects when I have to read his code.
We have been working 30 years together - and not a thing has changed. Needless to say, I have stopped trying to change his habits.
Fortunately, he is a very smart guy...
PS
Jeff, how long did it take you to unformat that sample code? Is there a tool to do that? 😀
June 6, 2013 at 8:02 am
Michael Meierruth (6/6/2013)
... how long did it take you to unformat that sample code? Is there a tool to do that? 😀
When I shrink CSS files down I replace all line breaks and tabs with spaces, then replace double-spaces with singles... and then I replace } with } + line feed
June 6, 2013 at 5:57 pm
Michael Meierruth (6/6/2013)
PSJeff, how long did it take you to unformat that sample code? Is there a tool to do that? 😀
If you're talking about the single line code example in the article, it took 0 time to reformat that code to something readable because I actually wrote the formatted code first, then deleted the comments, converted all tabs and all CRLF pairs to single spaces, deleted the dupe spaces (using your code, by the way), and set everything to lower case.
There are a couple of code reformatters on the web and, of course, Red Gate has a good one, but none of them format or can be made to format the code the way I like it. Of course, anything is a very good improvement of the single line method of posting code.
--Jeff Moden
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