To offer some suggestions, here's some things you can try to better word your questions. From having been asked my fair share of vague questions by customers, here's something I *wish* everyone did before they asked the question.

1) Come up with your basic question

2) Then look at it and determine what you'd need to know if you were going to answer it. Would you need to know what OS it's on? Would a code example be helpful? Would you want to know what modules they were using? The purpose? Example from my RL.. "Is the network down?"

3) Come with a question, not a potential answer. Instead of saying "XYZ isn't doing what I want it to, what's wrong?", say "I'm trying to do ABC.. and here's what I attempted. It's not working." RL example - saying "My mail keeps getting bounced back to me" instead of "Is the network down?".. or "This server keeps Blue Screening, can you take a look at it" instead of "Can you rebuild this server?"

4) There are stupid questions, contrairy to popular belief, but it's not because they're simple. And your question isn't stupid. The stupid questions are the ones that never ask the question or the questionier wants you to somehow infuse them with all your vast knowledge. To me, a stupid question is "Plz tell me in detail about perl. And how to make a web page." WTF?

Hope this is helpful.. Rich

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• 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).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.