From Fedora Project Wiki

This page lists the good practices while using Ask Fedora:

Please feel free to add more points to the list. If you need to discuss something with the forum moderators, give feedback at Ask Fedora, or find us at #ask-fedora-ops on Freenode

List

  • Search before you post: Search the interweb and then Ask Fedora itself before posting your question.
  • If you have more than one question, post them separately: Do not write a post that says “many Fedora questions” and ask them all together. You’re to ask each question separately.
  • Frame a question: It's Ask Fedora after all.
  • It is perfectly OK to answer a question that you asked: There's nothing stopping you from answering your own questions. When you do, please post your answer separately, and not in the question description.
  • Write English: At the moment, we do not have support for different languages in Ask Fedora. It's a feature that will be added in the future. Please write complete words and not SMS lingo here ("please", not "PLS"). This is not messaging, there is no shortage of space. Please use single, correct punctuation's. "!!!" doesn't mean anything.
  • File bugs in bugzilla: If it is a package related issue or you are requesting an update for some package, do so directly via bugzilla. If you haven't done that before, refer to How_to_file_a_bug_report
  • Ask questions in a useful manner Here’s a great post that tells you how to ask good questions. Here are some more tips on getting answers.
  • Provide information about to help people help you better: People can't help you if you do not provide specific information on the issue you face. Some commands and logs that you should look for information to provide with your questions:
    • lsusb: Information on USB devices
    • lspci: Information on PCI devices
    • dmesg: Kernel messages
    • uname -a: Current running kernel
    • /var/log/Xorg.0.log: X server errors, for example when you don't get a display on boot
    • /var/log/messages: Kernel and more common errors
    • ~/.xsession-errors: User session errors
    • /var/log/pm-suspend.log: Suspend/resume logs
    • Google: All of the above logs and commands can be learned from the internet.
  • Use the tools: When you want to post information along with your question, please use the tools, such as quoting, code snippet etc. If folks can’t read your questions quickly, they are not likely to answer them.
  • Use correct tags: Make use of existing tags instead of adding new ones. This increases the visibility of your question. Remember that tags are without spaces, so “fedora16″ is not the same as “fedora 16″. The latter actually breaks up into two separate tabs “fedora” and “16″ which is illogical.
  • Is that an answer?: Only post answers when you're providing a solution to the asked question. For everything else, comment on the appropriate question/answer. Having a thread of conversation as answers just confuses people looking for information. Use comments. Only post an answer when you have one.
  • Go through the "sticky" posts!
  • Subscribe to questions you ask/answer/comment: A lot of answered questions are not marked so because the original asker hasn’t cared to follow up!
  • Reward your helpers: This is most important. Mark answers as correct, vote up a good question, vote down a bad one, comment for queries. This will make it a better, more knowledgeable forum. Use your votes!. Do not rename the question to add a "Solved" tag. Just pick the answer you like as the correct one instead.
  • If you see someone not using the forum correctly, point it out: Comment telling them what they're doing wrong politely. Hint: Use "Please mark an answer as correct." instead of "Mark an answer as correct."
  • Do not take offense at being down voted: Down voting implies that someone doesn't think your answer is good enough, or complete. This isn't personal at all. What this actually means is that you have the opportunity to learn something new. Please do not take offence if your answer is down voted. It's how the forum is designed to work.
  • Last but not least be polite and refrain from ranting: Ranting makes people not want to help you. There isn't anything else to it. If you're polite, folks will want to help you.

Short cuts

Page owner

Ankur Sinha 'FranciscoD'

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