Introduction

In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way more likely to get you a satisfactory answer.

Now that use of open source has become widespread, you can often get as good answers from other, more experienced users as from hackers. This is a Good Thing; users tend to be just a little bit more tolerant of the kind of failures newbies often have. Still, treating experienced users like hackers in the ways we recommend here will generally be the most effective way to get useful answers out of them, too.

在骇客帝国里，你获得科技问题的答案的类型，更多地取决于你提问问题的方式，就像是取决于发展这个问题的难度。这篇导读将要教会你怎样提问多于给你一个让你满意的答案。

现在使用开放的资源，已经变得普遍了，你经常可以从别人那里得到答案，和从黑客那里得到的一样好。这是一件好事情，老用户通常比失败的新手多一点宽容。尽管如此，我们推荐像对待黑客一样的方式对待熟练的老用户，这样通常更容易得到有用的答案。

 老师翻译的：

前言

在黑客的世界里，你提出一个技术问题后，最终能否得到满意的答案，取决于你的提问方式。这个指南 就是关于如何正确提问的。现在开源软件已经越来越多了，你可以从高手、黑客那里得到很多问题的解答。和黑客相比，一般的高手会对新手更耐心一些。但即便如此，如果你按照本指南中推荐的方式，像对待黑客那样对待所有高手，你会更高效地获得优质解答。

The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, “Good question!” is a strong and sincere compliment.

Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.

What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks — they take without giving back, and they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this “losers” (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it “lusers”).

We realize that there are many people who just want to use the software we write, and who have no interest in learning technical details. For most people, a computer is merely a tool, a means to an end; they have more important things to do and lives to live. We acknowledge that, and don't expect everyone to take an interest in the technical matters that fascinate us. Nevertheless, our style of answering questions is tuned for people who do take such an interest and are willing to be active participants in problem-solving. That's not going to change. Nor should it; if it did, we would become less effective at the things we do best.

We're (largely) volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. So we filter ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear to be losers in order to spend our question-answering time more efficiently, on winners.

If you find this attitude obnoxious, condescending, or arrogant, check your assumptions. We're not asking you to genuflect to us — in fact, most of us would love nothing more than to deal with you as an equal and welcome you into our culture, if you put in the effort required to make that possible. But it's simply not efficient for us to try to help people who are not willing to help themselves. It's OK to be ignorant; it's not OK to play stupid.

So, while it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of attitude that leads to competence — alert, thoughtful, observant, willing to be an active partner in developing a solution. If you can't live with this sort of discrimination, we suggest you pay somebody for a commercial support contract instead of asking hackers to personally donate help to you.

If you decide to come to us for help, you don't want to be one of the losers. You don't want to seem like one, either. The best way to get a rapid and responsive answer is to ask it like a person with smarts, confidence, and clues who just happens to need help on one particular problem.

(Improvements to this guide are welcome. You can mail suggestions to esr@thyrsus.com or respond-auto@linuxmafia.com. Note however that this document is not intended to be a general guide to netiquette, and we will generally reject suggestions that are not specifically related to eliciting useful answers in a technical forum.)

Before You Ask

Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or on a website chat board, do the following:

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.

Use tactics like doing a Google search on the text of whatever error message you get (searching Google groups as well as Web pages). This might well take you straight to fix documentation or a mailing list thread answering your question. Even if it doesn't, saying “I googled on the following phrase but didn't get anything that looked promising” is a good thing to do in e-mail or news postings requesting help, if only because it records what searches won't help. It will also help to direct other people with similar problems to your thread by linking the search terms to what will hopefully be your problem and resolution thread.

Take your time. Do not expect to be able to solve a complicated problem with a few seconds of Googling. Read and understand the FAQs, sit back, relax and give the problem some thought before approaching experts. Trust us, they will be able to tell from your questions how much reading and thinking you did, and will be more willing to help if you come prepared. Don't instantly fire your whole arsenal of questions just because your first search turned up no answers (or too many).

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that having put thought and effort into solving your problem before seeking help, the more likely you are to actually get help. Beware of asking the wrong question. If you ask one that is based on faulty assumptions, J. Random Hacker is quite likely to reply with a uselessly literal answer while thinking “Stupid question...”, and hoping the experience of getting what you asked for rather than what you needed will teach you a lesson.

Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not; you aren't, after all, paying for the service. You will earn an answer, if you earn it, by asking a substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking question — one that implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.

On the other hand, making it clear that you are able and willing to help in the process of developing the solution is a very good start. “Would someone provide a pointer?”, “What is my example missing?”, and “What site should I have checked?” are more likely to get answered than “Please post the exact procedure I should use.” because you're making it clear that you're truly willing to complete the process if someone can just point you in the right direction.

When You Ask

Choose your forum carefully

Be sensitive in choosing where you ask your question. You are likely to be ignored, or written off as a loser, if you:

Hackers blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order to try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in irrelevance. You don't want this to happen to you.

The first step, therefore, is to find the right forum. Again, Google and other Web-searching methods are your friend. Use them to find the project webpage most closely associated with the hardware or software giving you difficulties. Usually it will have links to a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list, and to project mailing lists and their archives. These mailing lists are the final places to go for help, if your own efforts (including reading those FAQs you found) do not find you a solution. The project page may also describe a bug-reporting procedure, or have a link to one; if so, follow it.

Shooting off an e-mail to a person or forum which you are not familiar with is risky at best. For example, do not assume that the author of an informative webpage wants to be your free consultant. Do not make optimistic guesses about whether your question will be welcome — if you're unsure, send it elsewhere, or refrain from sending it at all.

When selecting a Web forum, newsgroup or mailing list, don't trust the name by itself too far; look for a FAQ or charter to verify your question is on-topic. Read some of the back traffic before posting so you'll get a feel for how things are done there. In fact, it's a very good idea to do a keyword search for words relating to your problem on the newsgroup or mailing list archives before you post. It may find you an answer, and if not it will help you formulate a better question.

Don't shotgun-blast all the available help channels at once, that's like yelling and irritates people. Step through them softly.

Know what your topic is! One of the classic mistakes is asking questions about the Unix or Windows programming interface in a forum devoted to a language or library or tool portable across both. If you don't understand why this is a blunder, you'd be best off not asking any questions at all until you get it.

In general, questions to a well-selected public forum are more likely to get useful answers than equivalent questions to a private one. There are multiple reasons for this. One is simply the size of the pool of potential respondents. Another is the size of the audience; hackers would rather answer questions that educate many people than questions serving only a few.

Understandably, skilled hackers and authors of popular software are already receiving more than their fair share of mis-targeted messages. By adding to the flood, you could in extreme cases even be the straw that breaks the camel's back — quite a few times, contributors to popular projects have withdrawn their support because collateral damage in the form of useless e-mail traffic to their personal accounts became unbearable.

Stack Overflow

Search, then ask on Stack Exchange

In recent years, the Stack Exchange community of sites has emerged as a major resource for answering technical and other questions and is even the preferred forum for many open-source projects.

Start with a Google search before looking at Stack Exchange; Google indexes it in real time. There's a very good chance someone has already asked a similar question, and the Stack Exchange sites are often near the top of the search results. If you didn't find anything through Google, search again on the specific site most relevant to your question (see below). Searching with tags can help narrow down the results.

If you still didn't find anything, post your question on the one site where it's most on-topic. Use the formatting tools, especially for code, and add tags that are related to the substance of your question (particularly the name of the programming language, operating system, or library you're having trouble with). If a commenter asks you for more information, edit your main post to include it. If any answer is helpful, click the up arrow to upvote it; if an answer gives a solution to your problem, click the check under the voting arrows to accept it as correct.

Stack Exchange has grown to over 100 sites, but here are the most likely candidates:

Several projects have their own specific sites, including Android, Ubuntu, TeX/LaTeX, and SharePoint. Check the Stack Exchange site for an up-to-date list.

Web and IRC forums

Your local user group, or your Linux distribution, may advertise a Web forum or IRC channel where newbies can get help. (In non-English-speaking countries newbie forums are still more likely to be mailing lists.) These are good first places to ask, especially if you think you may have tripped over a relatively simple or common problem. An advertised IRC channel is an open invitation to ask questions there and often get answers in real time.

In fact, if you got the program that is giving you problems from a Linux distribution (as is common today), it may be better to ask in the distro's forum/list before trying the program's project forum/list. The project's hackers may just say, “use our build”.

Before posting to any Web forum, check if it has a Search feature. If it does, try a couple of keyword searches for something like your problem; it just might help. If you did a general Web search before (as you should have), search the forum anyway; your Web-wide search engine might not have all of this forum indexed recently.

There is an increasing tendency for projects to do user support over a Web forum or IRC channel, with e-mail reserved more for development traffic. So look for those channels first when seeking project-specific help.

In IRC, it's probably best not to dump a long problem description on the channel first thing; some people interpret this as channel-flooding. Best to utter a one-line problem description in a way pitched to start a conversation on the channel.

As a second step, use project mailing lists

When a project has a development mailing list, write to the mailing list, not to individual developers, even if you believe you know who can best answer your question. Check the documentation of the project and its homepage for the address of a project mailing list, and use it. There are several good reasons for this policy:

If a project has both a “user” and a “developer” (or “hacker”) mailing list or Web forum, and you are not hacking on the code, ask in the “user” list/forum. Do not assume that you will be welcome on the developer list, where they're likely to experience your question as noise disrupting their developer traffic.

However, if you are sure your question is non-trivial, and you get no answer in the “user” list/forum for several days, try the “developer” one. You would be well advised to lurk there for a few daysor at least review the last few days of archived messages, to learn the local folkways before posting (actually this is good advice on any private or semi-private list).

If you cannot find a project's mailing list address, but only see the address of the maintainer of the project, go ahead and write to the maintainer. But even in that case, don't assume that the mailing list doesn't exist. Mention in your e-mail that you tried and could not find the appropriate mailing list. Also mention that you don't object to having your message forwarded to other people. (Many people believe that private e-mail should remain private, even if there is nothing secret in it. By allowing your message to be forwarded you give your correspondent a choice about how to handle your e-mail.)

前言

在黑客的世界里，你提出一个技术问题后，最终能否得到满意的答案，取决于你的提问方式。这个指南就是关于如何正确提问的。现在开源软件已经越来越多了，你可以从高手、黑客那里得到很多问题的解答。和黑客相比，一般的高手会对新手更耐心一些。但即便如此，如果你按照本指南中推荐的方式，像对待黑客那样对待所有高手，你会更高效地获得优质解答。

高手、黑客喜欢有挑战性、需要深入思考的问题，如果不是这样，我们也成不了黑客。如果你提出一个值得反复咀嚼玩味的问题，我们会对你感激不尽。好的问题可以刺激我们的思维，可以加深我们对问题的理解，还经常揭露出我们之前没有意识到、思考过的地方。

但黑客也并不是对新手和简单的问题不予理睬，我们只是对那些提问前不愿自己思考，不愿自己做足功课的人态度粗鲁。这种人是时间杀手，他们只知索取，从不付出，把我们本该花在更值得的问题和人上的时间都浪费了。我们回答问题的方式适合于那些真正对问题感兴趣并且愿意积极主动地参与到问题的解决中的人。我们从繁忙的工作中抽出时间回答问题，为了做到价值最大化，我们会果断地过滤掉那些时间杀手的问题。

无知没关系，装白痴就不好了。你不需要现在就已经是个行家，但你要具备最终能使你成为一个高手的特质：机敏、深入思考、善于观察、乐于主动参与问题的解决。如果你做不到，那你最好付钱请人回答你的问题，而不是让黑客帮你。想快速得到解答的最好方法就是表现出你的聪明、自信、有自己对问题的思考，只是在某个特定问题上遇到了麻烦而已。

提问之前

1. 尝试在你准备提问的论坛的旧文章中找答案

2. Google：既要搜索网页也要搜索谷歌论坛

3. 尝试阅读官方指导手册找答案

4. 尝试阅读常见问题文件（FAQ）找答案

5. 试着通过试验寻找答案

6. 想想有没有自己认识的朋友知道答案

7. 如果你是个程序员，尝试通过读源码找答案

当你提问的时候，要说明自己已经做了上述努力，这样对方就知道你不是个伸手党，帮助你不是在浪费时间。最好同时说明你从这些尝试当中学到了什么，因为我们更乐于帮助那些真正能够从答案中学到东西的人。

遇到任何错误信息提示，都可以直接用Google搜索那些错误提示，这可能会直接搜到可以解决问题的文件。即使找不到，在提问时说明“我搜索了这些关键字，但没找到任何有用的东西”也是个好习惯，因为它至少表明这些问题是搜索不到结果的。这也会把那些遇到相似问题的人通过搜索引擎引导到你的帖子。

别着急，不要期望随便Google一下就能解决复杂的问题。读读手册、FAQ等等，努力思考，尝试着独立解决这个问题。真正的高手能够从你的提问方式中分辨出你在提问前做了多少准备和思考，他们更愿意帮助那些提问前已经尝试独立解决问题的人。

绝对不要认为别人有义务帮助你，你并没有付钱给对方。你只能通过提出一个经过自己努力搜索、思考的，有价值的问题来争取获得答案。要知道一个好问题的解答，不只会让你自己取得进步，也会为整个社群做出贡献。

“谁能给个提示吗？”，“请问我的案例中缺了什么？”，“请问我该去哪个网站找答案？”，这样的提问方式更能获得帮助，因为这表明你非常愿意在寻找答案的过程中积极主动、付出努力，只要有人能指出方向，你就有完成的能力和决心。

“请把我需要的详细答案给我”，这样的提问方式令人厌恶，因为这表明你是“饭来张口，衣来伸手”。

提问之时

一、找对地方

慎选提问的论坛

1. 不要去与主题不合的论坛提问。黑客为防止论坛的沟通渠道被无关的东西干扰，会删除那些搞错地方的问题。所以第一步就是要Google找到与你的问题最相关的论坛，先去看旧文章、FAQ等等，如果经过上述努力依然找不到答案，那就发帖提问吧。

2. 不要去进阶技术论坛提问太过初级的问题，反之亦然。选择论坛、讨论组或邮件列表的时候，不要太过相信它们的名字，阅读About、FAQ等来确定这是不是与你的问题相关的地方。发帖前先读一点旧文，这样你能对它们的文化、做事方式更了解。

3. 不要把同一个问题同时转帖太多个讨论组。这会像机关枪扫射一样，会打扰大家。要一步步慢慢来。

4. 不要给一个既不是熟人也没有义务回答你的问题的人发私人邮件。向自己不熟悉的人或论坛发邮件是很危险的。不要假定一个提供内容丰富的网页的人就会愿意做你的免费顾问。也不要对自己的问题是否会受到欢迎做太过乐观的估计，如果你不确定自己的问题在这里是否会受欢迎，那就去别处提问，或者干脆不要发邮件。

事实上，那些高阶黑客和流行软件的创造者们已经收到了太多的错发信息、邮件。如果你不以正确的方式提问，你就会是压死骆驼的最后一棵稻草。很多自愿给大家解答的黑客后来选择退出就是因为以错误的方式提问的私人邮件汹涌而来，让人不堪承受。

Stack Overflow

近些年来，Stack Exchange community 已经成为了回答技术问题和其他相关问题的主要社群，尤其是对于那些开放源码的程序来说是首选。

先Google，因为Google索引是即时的，有其他人问过类似问题的可能性很大，这时Stack Exchange 网站会排在Google搜索结果的前面。如果Google后什么都没找到，那就再去特定的相关网站搜索。使用标签搜索会更精准。

如果还是搜不到答案，就在与你的问题最相关的网站发帖提问。发帖要符合格式，尤其对于代码方面的问题，要添加与你的问题主题相关的标签，包括编程的语言、操作系统、使用的框架等。如果回答者说需要你提供额外的信息，请在你的主贴中添加，这样其他遇到相似问题的人能更容易地通过你的帖子得到答案。如果得到了任何有帮助的答案，一定要给对方点赞。如果有答案解决了你的问题，请标明这是正确答案。

Stack Exchange 已经有超过100个网站，但以下是最常用的几个：

网站和IRC论坛

通过论坛和IRC（聊天程序）频道提供用户支持的趋势渐增，而邮件更多地用于程序开发者之间的交流。所以，先去搜索这些论坛、IRC频道。

你当地的用户组织，或者你的电脑系统的新版发布时，都可能在宣传一些帮助新人的论坛或IRC（即时聊天）频道。当你是个零基础小白，常被一些很简单、基础的问题拦住去路时，这是你提问的好地方。这些有广告赞助的IRC频道都是欢迎你来提问的，并且你一般可以立即得到回复。

如果你只在特定的Linux版本中程序出现问题（这很常见），在去该程序的论坛之前最好先去该发行版本的论坛咨询，否则你得到的回答很可能是—— 使用我们的版本。

在IRC频道，最好不要一下抛出一大段的问题描述，对方会晕掉。最好先尽可能简短地描述你的问题来开始你们的交流。

还解决不了？使用邮件列表

当项目提供开发者邮件列表时，向列表而不是其中的个别成员提问，这样做有以下几个原因：

如果一个项目既有使用者论坛又有开发者论坛，而你并不想研究他们的源码，那就请你去使用者论坛提问。不要以为开发者论坛会欢迎你们这些使用者，他们多半会把你的提问视为影响他们开发的噪音。

然而，如果你确认自己的问题是足够有价值的，并且在使用者论坛里好几天都得不到答案，那就去开发者论坛试试。你最好先在开发者论坛潜伏几天，看看旧文章，了解他们的“风俗习惯”，然后再发帖子。

如果你找不到项目的邮件列表，只有维护者的邮件地址，那就发邮件给他。但不要认为项目的邮件列表就一定不存在，或许只是你没找到，在你发出的邮件中要说明这一点。并且要说明可以帮忙把邮件之间转给相关负责人。

让回复更容易进行。以“请回复到......”的邮件多半不会得到回复。如果你都不愿意花几秒钟在客户端设置一下回复地址，那对方也不愿花时间回答你的问题。

在论坛中要求通过邮件给你解答是无理的要求，除非你认为邮件内容有敏感信息。如果你只想在有人在论坛中回答时得到邮件提醒，那大多数论坛都支持这一功能。