The questioner is smart. He or she knows that they do not know something. They took the first step.
The questioner knows what he is looking for specifically, but may be making a bad choice. It does not remove the fact that they do not know something come the day they actually wish to do that. There are no wrong answers. TIMTOWTDI.
The questioner may not be clear, or in some cases, given us too much information. Asking for clarification is not bad if you do not understand the question.
The questioner can be asked questions so long as we are polite about it. Nothing is wrong with asking a question while progressing the conversation. It's typically done in sales. "I got you N, is there anything related you may need." "This is how you write a CGI by hand, but you may be interested in the CGI module as it makes it cleaner."
Sometimes people are rude jerk faces and you are doing pro bono work. You are on the net where your reputation is all out in the open. You do reserve the right to end the conversation in a not-unkind way to preserve such. People frequently forget this.
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
