Interrogating Information: Smart Questions

24 Jan 2024

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The Art In Smart Questions

I was browsing on Stack Overflow for reasons of self-improvement and as I was lurking around I discovered something quite interesting, and I wish to share my experiences with all of you. For those unaware, Stack Overflow is a forums-like website that lets programmers "ask" questions to other programmers. The reason I quoted the word ask was because it's a page where anyone can ask questions and that means there will be both good and bad questions.

A good question I came across was whether they could interact better with videos with HTML or Javascript. He wanted to see if you clicked a part of an image, a specific video would play. He even provided an example of what it may look like to make it even clearer. When smart questions are asked they get clear answers with the answers providing specific examples. When bad questions are asked they don't get answered, get downvoted, and possibly get removed from Stack Overflow. I noticed that there was an art form in these smart questions.

Like I had mentioned before not all questions on Stack Overflow were good, some lacked the question in a question. I know, crazy. You can even tell if a question is a bad question when it has downvotes. And when you do read them they're like one-liners. Unfortunately for us, most bad questions are now removed quite quickly but, I managed to find a bad question. The question was pertaining to an error with the "I'm not a robot" form. I noticed how with this example, they did not give a source code or ask a clear question, and because of that, they were not able to get an answer. I learned that important communication even if it's just a question is vital to success.

Link: Smart Question / nonSmart Question