All of us ask numerous questions everyday. Some of you get the definite answers and others get ambiguous answers for the same questions. If we see the reason why we get an ambiguous answer for the latter, it is evident that the question doesn't have full details. So the most important prerequisite is that all the questions should have enough information to provide an answer. If you don’t provide all the information required for the question, no matter however simple the question is… still you will end up getting an ambiguous answer (At least, it will be ambiguous to the person who is asking the question).
For example, let me ask you simple questions and I want you to answer :
- “Am I wearing glasses or contact lenses?"
- "Am I left or right handed?"
Come on give a try, think hard, make an effort, they are simple questions to answer!!
I know these are crazy questions to ask and even if you guess the answer, the probability of getting the right answer is only 50%. I'm sure you must be thinking - "how can I give the answer without knowing the person". Most of you would ignore to answer these questions and some of you who are willing to go extra mile to help, ask me for more details about the questions.
Then, I come back with more information on both the questions:
- "Sometimes I get headache when I read fo rlong hours."
- "While playing cricket I bat with left hand and bowl with right hand."
After reading the above two statements most of you choose not to answer the questions. You must be thinking that I have I given extraneous information for the first question and contradicting information for the second question. I agree with you that I haven't provided enough information and there is ambiguity in additional information which I have provided. And most likely I don't get answers for the above questions or I might get an answer which is 50% correct. Although, I'm very keen to get the answer and I have decided to ask the same questions on different thread/post/community. And chances of getting the correct answers are very slim.
What was missing in my questions?
- I haven't provided enough information or background about myself
- I have assumed that everyone knows about me
- I have provided inadequate/ambiguous additional information which was not helpful
To keep it simple, I would say my questions were lacking the passion to get an answer. It shows that I don't care to get the right answer. Asking well structured questions shows how much you care for the answer. Generally great questions lead to further unexpected detailed answers. So I encourage all of you to ask questions with complete details. Please consider the following points while asking questions on the QlikView Community.
- Please keep the post subject line as relevant as possible. This helps other users while searching for the similar posts
- Please give background on your data model if it’s relevant to the question
- Post some sample data, sample QV document or screenshots wherever possible
- Remember you can scramble the data if you have Design/UI based questions
- Create simple Inline table and ask the question which is relevant to your problem
- Give some background on what you have tried and it helps us to save the time
- Most important is marking the correct answer as “answered/helpful”. Again this helps other users who are looking for similar questions and I'm sure it encourages the person who is trying to answer your question
- I can't stress enough on being polite/humble while asking the question. Please remember everyone on this community is doing voluntary work
- Please don't post multiple times rather request someone to help you by sending a message
Now you must be thinking on how to judge if it was well structured question or not? I think any question if I answer in the first attempt, is a well structured question. I mean, any question which was asked with a great care, is more likely to get an answer in the first reply.
Cheers,
DV
www.QlikShare.com
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