Eric Raymond explains how to ask proper questions of open-source coders.

*Since Eric Raymond is an archetypal open-source guru, he surely won't mind me uh blatantly stealing this.... Unfortunately, no, he doesn't want random clowns blandly cutting-and-pasting this ENTIRE HUGE CODE OF PRODUCTIVE ONLINE BEHAVIOR in all its mind-boggling bullet-point netiquette intricacy. Even though it's plenty interesting and I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never read it before.

Why surely its ineffable wisdom is a lot safer if I pirate and copy it in its glittering entirety on my blog here

*Eric Raymond:

"Unpleasant but necessary lawyer-fodder: the material on this site is copyright by Eric S. Raymond. Except as granted below and explicitly by licenses on individual documents, all rights under U.S. copyright law and the Berne Convention (where applicable) are reserved.

"I get a lot of letters from people asking if they can link to pages on my site, mirror them, do translations, etc. Here is my policy:

You may link to any portion of this site that you wish.

You may mirror any portion of this site that you wish.

You may not make or redistribute static copies (whether print or online) without my express permission. (((Yeah, okay, Mr. Raymond, such elementary courtesy is not too much to ask of a benighted mankind, etc.)))

"In general, I want lots of people to see my content, and if you want to help with that I'm happy to let you. However, I don't like having old, stale versions of my content floating around on other peoples' sites. These rules are mainly designed to try to ensure that when some third party sees my name on a document, the content reflects all my updates to it.

"Therefore, I refuse requests from people who want to take one of my documents, modify it for a particular audience, and redistribute. Don't even bother asking, because I'll say no. Instead, write your document as a discussion of or comment on mine, and include a link to its home location or a locally mirrored version."

*I'm gonna bow the knee to Eric and merely run the table of contents. They do recursively carry the flavor of the entire text. What if ALL human discourse was written like this? Utopia, or Oblivion?

Table of Contents

Translations
Disclaimer
Introduction
Before You Ask
When You Ask
Choose your forum carefully
Stack Overflow
Web and IRC forums
As a second step, use project mailing lists
Use meaningful, specific subject headers
Make it easy to reply
Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
Send questions in accessible, standard formats
Be precise and informative about your problem
Volume is not precision
Don't rush to claim that you have found a bug
Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework
Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses
Describe your problem's symptoms in chronological order
Describe the goal, not the step
Don't ask people to reply by private e-mail
Be explicit about your question
When asking about code
Don't post homework questions
Prune pointless queries
Don't flag your question as “Urgent”, even if it is for you
Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Follow up with a brief note on the solution
How To Interpret Answers
RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You've Seriously Screwed Up
If you don't understand...
Dealing with rudeness
On Not Reacting Like A Loser
Questions Not To Ask
Good and Bad Questions
If You Can't Get An Answer
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way

Related Resources
Acknowledgements
Translations

Translations: Bahasa Indonesian Belorussian Bulgarian Brazilo-Portuguese Bulgarian Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Dutch French Georgian German Greek Hindi Irish Gaelic Japanese Lithuanian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Spanish Thai Ukrainian...