Rank: ? (767)
Member #: 11085

Well, considering that I am now a moderator of this forum and have the power to pin anything I wish to the top of this section, I have decided that now would be a rather decent time to make another speech similar to the one I made in the PHP forum on the topic of how to properly format a question in order to have it answered in as swiftly as possible. I implore all newcomers to this section to read this post before making a new topic, as if you do not adhere to its guidelines, I will most likely end up referring you to it in response to whatever it is that you have asked.

First and foremost, before I mention anything about formatting, I believe it is imperative that you know that neither we nor any other community I have ever come across on the whole of the Internet will do your homework for you. If you simply post a topic with the prompt for the assignment you are to do (often, sadly enough, in the same formatting) and ask for help, you will only receive questions and, in some instances, reprimands in response. This is not to say that we will not assist you with your homework, from my best guesses, that is most of what I do here. This is a programming help forum, meaning we will assist you with programming. Getting an A in a class on an assignment will not help you with programming, in fact, it will probably cause some harm. If you require assistance with homework, we will provide it, but only if you show some effort and initiative of your own. This means that, while we will not do an assignment for you, as long as you attempt it first you may feel free to post specific problems that you are having on the assignment. I wont go into all my philosophies on that subject here, however, as it not only is off topic, but also would most likely take up too much room. If you wish to read more about why I am right in this area, feel free to check out this topic.

Before you even click the link to a new topic, however, you should make efforts to see if your problem has already been solved. This could be inconvenient until this site has a search function again, but try to spend at least five minutes on a search engine, such as Google, looking for the answer to your problem. The five minutes you spend searching for an answer will, more likely than not, save you five hours of waiting for a reply.

On to the subject of formatting, I believe it would be most useful if I went top down. Therefore, I shall start with the title. The title should not, under no circumstance, simply say something along the lines of "Help!!!!!" or "I'm stupid." for it is fairly obvious that you need help, lest you are asking a question simply to waste your own time, and I don't particularly care what your own opinion of yourself is. Topic titles such as this are worthless. The purpose of a topic title is to inform those who will be answering your question what, in the simplest terms, you are asking in order that we can assess whether or not we are even capable of answering the question before opening up your topic. A poorly designed topic title wastes our time, leads to a shorter burn-out time, and, at least in my case, makes a topic unworthy of me even opening it, despite that I most likely am capable of answering whatever questions it contains, about one fifth of the time. Make sure your title is as decisive as possible. A good length for a title is about three to seven words. If it is utterly impossible for you to fit a description of your problem in so few words, there is the description field.

Onto the subject of descriptions. Descriptions have much less value that titles, and thus, deserve much fewer words to describe their use. In most circumstances, the description field can be left blank. It should only be used in the event that you wish to further describe your topic if you are asking a broad question to give the answerer a better understanding of the problem as briefly as possible. The description field should not be used to beg, as with the title. I don't care in how big a font, or if you feel the need to press caps lock before you type it, I do not and will never care just how urgent you think your problem is. Asking for help or crying out urgency wont get your question answered any faster, in fact, I am inclined to let it sit for a day before I answer it.

Now, at long last, the main portion of a post, the body. The body of a post should consist of a decisive well-written paragraph or two which describes your problem as well as methods you have already used in an attempt to solve it. It should not, as mentioned earlier, simply consist of a problem, especially not a prompt, and a plee. Now, I used two adjectives to describe the few paragraphs you type to describe your problem, the first is decisive which means that the paragraphs should be as short as your can make them while maintaining the message. As by now you probably know, a long post is unkind to the eyes and very easy to skip over entirely. The second and more important adjective was well-written. By this, I do not mean that you should use perfect grammar and punctuation, but rather that you should make an attempt to do so. At the very least, make efforts to skip no other punctuation mark then the apostrophe and abstain from all acronyms and abbreviations. It is important to remember that this is a forum, it is not an instant messaging client. This means that, not only is the strain for speed of a real time conversation gone, but also that you have no idea if the person reading your post will be familiar with your particular colloquial bastardization of the English language. I, at the very least, most likely am not. Proper grammar and punctuation is of the utmost importance in situations such as this in order to disambiguate your post and, more importantly, to make it easy to read and understand. If your post has multiple means, odds are that I will pick the one you did not intend, and if your post is difficult to read and comprehend, I will tell you to fix it so that I can. It is your responsibility as the person seeking information to make all sacrifices to those who are giving you their time, without any compensation, to answer it. Also, on the subject of compensation, in the instance that I am the one to solve your problem, although it may differ for others, do not give me any. Reopening a topic just to see the words "Thank you" is a waste of my time I would prefer to avoid. Furthermore, it is also important to note that this board does support [ code ] [ /code ] tags and that your post should use them if you are including any code. On the subject of code, however, it is important to remember to only include relevant code, by which I mean, only that which strictly relates to your problem. Preferably, the code sample you post is between five and fifteen lines; however, if this preference is too stringent, be sure to include about three lines before and three lines after your problem is occurring.

Now for the final paragraph with relation to formating, the two check boxes next to "Post Options", show smilies and disable signatures. Personally, I don't believe emotions have a place on the Internet, but if you believe otherwise, other than the fact that you are wrong, make efforts to restrain yourself. A post should contain no more than two emoticons and, under no circumstances, should use them as punctuation. Also, although this has never been a problem here, be sure to keep your signature in check. It should contain no more than a maximum of two quotes and a link to contact information. Preferably, your signature consists of no more than your name as that is, after all, what a signature is.

I feel one final thing is worth mentioning in this topic, that is, make sure you are computer literate. There is such a thing as a stupid question as a baseline amount of knowledge is expected of you in almost all situations and any questions which dip below that line are stupid. Since this is a programming help forum, I would say that a baseline amount of knowledge is how to use a computer. I say this because I would like never again to encounter a situation such as the following, which truly did occur:
user: I have a problem with sessions... (code and errors here)
me: Your problem is that session_start() is not first in your code, simply move it to the top.
user: How exactly do I do that?
me: try cut and paste.
Make sure you know how to use a computer and have at least some common sense, I don't want to have to have to tell anyone asking a question about programming how to push the power button.

Thus concludes perhaps the longest post I have ever written on this board. With any luck you remembered to blink and your question will not require another of equal length in explanations. Feel free now to flame me and add anything I have left out.