Some of us at EE.SE can be pretty blunt when it comes to responding to questions that 'need work'. I think it is important for students to know how to ask questions. This skill is not specific for EE.SE but is of value in many places both online as in real (working) life. I believe the help pages explain a bit on that topic, but I guess there are a few best practices:
- It is important to realize that the people answering questions here do it because they enjoy doing it, and they do so in their own spare time. Nobody gets payed for writing answers and there is a fine balance between enjoying to write an answer and dismissing a question for various reasons.
- Nobody likes searching for duplicate questions, make sure to have checked the stack for similar questions. One may even link them in your question and explain why the answer didn't help.
- Some basic electronics and programming knowledge is essential.
- Don't drop homework and expect us to solve it. Often with homework questions people will try to give pointers and not directly the full answer.
- I personally think it is good practice to state level of knowledge in the question (preferably at the end of the question, because it otherwise clutters the questions page with information that is not directly related to the question).
- Questions must be specific and not too broad. Try to minimize code or hardware to the bare minimum to reproduce an issue. Nobody is going to analyse a page full of code or an huge circuit diagram where only a small function or subsystem is really of importance. Also many problems solve themselves by just minimizing it to reproduce the issue.
- Explain what is done so far. Show some research has been done.
- Include a diagram whenever possible. Most of us have an aversion for wiring diagrams because they quickly get extremely hard to analyze.
- Explain what actually happens.
- Explain what you expect to happen.
- Explain what has been tried to solve it.
Good questions generally get good answers, no matter who asked them. Poor questions generally get poor answer, no matter who asked them.
