I remember various people being pointed to some suggestions on how to ask good technical questions. Anyone know any good resources? I have someone in my orbit who maybe could use a refresher...

Thanks @jakobward I think that's it. Not sure if it'll help in this case...

Have you asked ChatGPT yet? 🤣 Kidding, not kidding. If the person has any interest in self growth, they will ponder it. They might just need to sleep on it. Hopefully for one night and not a year or more. fingers crossed

No, but noted 🙂

From the linked page above is this section - that is pretty much the summation of the whole article. Perhaps you can put in your engineering Wiki or similar? That way it is isn't aimed at any one person - so there is no reason for an individual to feel that they have been singled out. And something like the below - is just good information for EVERYONE! --- • Describe the symptoms of your problem or bug carefully and clearly. • Describe the environment in which it occurs (machine, OS, application, whatever). Provide your vendor's distribution and release level (e.g.: “Fedora Core 7”, “Slackware 9.1”, etc.). • Describe the research you did to try and understand the problem before you asked the question. • Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down the problem yourself before you asked the question. • Describe any possibly relevant recent changes in your computer or software configuration. • If at all possible, provide a way to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment. Do the best you can to anticipate the questions a hacker will ask, and answer them in advance in your request for help. Giving hackers the ability to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment is especially important if you are reporting something you think is a bug in code. When you do this, your odds of getting a useful answer and the speed with which you are likely to get that answer both improve tremendously.

Nice writeup. Just to say it, in my case, I did mean to single this person out, because it's a longstanding chronic problem. I wanted them to understand that there IS a problem, this isn't just random best-practice advice, it's something that ideally they'd improve. This isn't like me, I'm non-confrontational to a fault. But.

Hi Dave, the moment a person's antenna senses confrontation, then emotions automatically kick in. That's hardwired in each and everyone of us. It is what ensured that your genes didn't ferment in the intestines of a sabre-toothed tiger, but survived to read this sentence. Welcoming criticism or feedback can be hard. The person had probably picked up that you were unhappy with him or her. So, when you said, "I don't mean to be rude or critical, but it'd save us both some time and frustration if you could get better at asking questions." their antenna probably picked up, "I do mean to be rude and critical. It'd save me some time and frustration if you could get better at asking questions." After that, you would basically be speaking to a deaf ear. Suggestion: First make a personal connection (not relating to the question at hand). Then ask them what they think about the subject or issue.

You're not wrong of course. The context was that the person just asked me a very unclear question, again, so there wasn't really an opportunity for unrelated casual chat. I've been working in the neighborhood of this person for some years now, this is not a new thing. Anyway, bottom line was as you say, I didn't get through, and really haven't over that period of time, neither have others. It is what it is.

TBH... fuck 'em then. Some ppl don't deserve help. You don't owe ppl help. Esp if they can't be arsed helping you to help them.