FAQ Help

[j4606]

I visit this forum regularly and usually see questions posted where I feel people are not going about it in the best way. While looking at other forums I noticed that some have a FAQ where suggestions on how to properly ask questions are posted. Now I know that I'm a rookie compared to most of the people here, but I also would like to contribute something to this website which has given me a place ask to questions and learn from what others are doing. So I'm posting this to ask for help in making a FAQ for this forum like the ones I see in other forums. An example of what I'm talking about is (

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=2244),

but I want it to be JavaScript forum specific. I think this will help out by giving forums members a link to a FAQ that can be used both to inform others of how to properly ask questions as well as keep people from having to repeat themselves.

Well here is what I have so far. It is a work in progress. Please feel free to edit and/or add to the list. I’m trying to write this between tasks at work so it will probably need to be edited and refined. Thanks in advance.

Before posting in the JavaScript forum you should:

1) Read the Site policies located at [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tek-tips.com/market.cfm.[/URL]

A brief summary of the site policies are:

No student posting, marketing & recruiting professionals, commercial and/or recruiting "spam", profanity,  cross posting, tack-on posting, arguing in an unprofessional manner,  posting of personal information, posting anything illegal (including hacking, cracking, passwords, etc.), defamatory posting, and shill posting or irritating other members.

You should search Google, Previous Posts, and FAQs Prior to Posting. Write Intelligent Questions and Use Descriptive Subject Lines.
 
2) Choose the correct forum for your questions. 
The forum list can be found at [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tek-tips.com/forumlist.cfm[/URL]

3) Make your questions forum specific. Your problem may involve combining two or more technologies such as asp, sql, html, css and JavaScript. You can often break down your problem into technology specific tasks.

4) Read the FAQs and use the search option. Occasionally the site search may take long or be unavailable. You can however use Google to do a site specific search. Visit [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en[/URL]
and in the input box labeled "Domain" type in "[URL unfurl="true"]www.tek-tips.com".[/URL]

5) Provide as much information as you can. Post your source code, a link to your website, and a link to the library/widget/tutorial/include file etc… you are using. To post your source code right click on your website, and click on the "view page source" option. Avoid posting excessive amounts of code and if possible post the shortest example of code that will help us understand your problem. Also do not post php, asp, ColdFusion or other server side code.

6) Learn to use TGML to format and highlight both your code and posts. A link to the TGML examples can be found here.
[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tipmaster.com/includes/tgmlinfo.cfm[/URL]

7) Try to stay on topic, this is the JavaScript forum and sometimes users may ask for help with html/css or some other topic. It is usually better for off topic questions to be answered in their corresponding forum. Answering an off topic question is also known as pulling a j4606 and you should try not “j4606” the thread in order to get “stars”, especially if the OP has already been directed to the proper forum.

8) Thank other members for help received by using the “Thank member for this valuable post!” link.

9) After posting and receiving an answer to your problem it beneficial for future posters if you provide a description of how you solved your problem and example code.

Thanks to johnwn who wrote the VB “How to get the best answers” FAQ which I used as an example and copied most of the good Ideas from.

 

[kaht]

I think you should bold this line, since all this does is convolute the relevant information and make it much harder to debug:

Also do not post php, asp, ColdFusion or other server side code.

I would also make a note about being sure to attempt to code a solution before asking for "help". This is my biggest pet peeve. If a person isn't even going to make an effort to do it themselves first, why should someone else be expected to?

That said, in #6 I would make special mention of the [ignore]

[/ignore] tag since it is probably one of the first ones that a new user is going to need to learn.

In #8 it is probably also worthwhile to point out how disrespectful it is to abandon a thread after you have received help - but I imagine that anybody that does this on a regular basis probably isn't going to take the time to read your FAQ anyway....

Those are the only things I can think of off the top of my head - looks pretty good otherwise.

-kaht

[i]Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way. - Homer Simpson[/i]

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[dwarfthrower]

Agreed kaht... just blazing in and asking "How do I do such and such, then have such and such do such and such?" without even thinking about the problem logically let alone try and figure it out themselves is annoying.

I'd try to include a paragraph that made it abundantly clear that Tek-Tips is a 'problem solving' resource, not a 'learning' resource and that if someone wishes to 'learn' javascript rather than solve a problem they are having with javascript then there are a large number of sites which would better cater to their needs.

Other than that, nice list.

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