Asking for help

August 19, 2004

Part of the reason that I wanted to start this site is to be a resource to help people out. Ideally I would make a posting or create some piece of software and somebody would read it or try to use it. If it didn’t quite meet their needs or I left out a little bit of information, then I would fully expect the person to ping me for more information or assistance. And I would have no problem helping that person, especially if it were documented on the site and provided future value to others. Of course, that is the ideal situation. Then there is the other extreme.

I wrote an article (http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/111899-1.shtml) several years ago for www.4guysfromrolla.com. About every six months or so, I get an email from someone wanting assistance. It usually isn’t a problem and I enjoy helping the person out. However, there seems to be an annoying trend where the person doesn’t even take the time get it as close as possible to what they need (i.e. a working prototype). They just send me the specs and say that they would appreciate any help I could give them. Like this person:

The basics are, I want to create a dynamic phone list with pictures, easily editable by an even more stupid user than myself.

I have created an Access database and can quite easily get the data out with one record per line, which is pretty rubbish, it really needs to be 3/4 column’s with the data sorted together per person in each cell sorted alphabetically left to right snaking accross the page then to the next row, etc etc.

Presentation such that there picture sits to the left of the column with name, extension number, email, floor, title sitting to the right of that picture. then the next person will sit in the column to the right of that in the same format…

Granted, everyone has to start somewhere and not everyone just instantly knows how to code in whatever language or environment they have chosen or been tasked with. But there are some pretty basic steps to take to get assistance from me or others.

Research/search before asking/posting
In this case, I believe the person asking the question actually did his research. There aren’t many articles about formatting lists into newspaper columns/left-to-right, top-to-bottom display. Rather than blindly posting to the 4Guys forums, he used some search engine and ran across my article. Kudos to him.
Make sure your questions are relevant to the forum category/author’s area of expertise
This is a toss up. They knew I had experience with what they needed. However, it really seems like they wanted assistance with the whole project. Well, obviously I do have experience with creating pages that connect to a database and display the results but that isn’t what I was writing the article about. If you are having basic issues with connecting to a database and displaying/formatting records, there are plenty of other articles that go through process and other forums/authors willing to provide that level of hand-holding.
Ask specific questions about specific issues you are encountering
Specifications with a request for help don’t cut it. Tell me the exact line number or error message you are receiving (and you googled the error message, right?). I won’t spend 30 minutes helping you learn ASP, but I may spend 30 minutes helping you debug why every other cell is blank. But I probably wouldn’t do it without the next two items…
Make a prototype of what you can achieve available
OK, not everyone can post their intranet projects to the web, but you can take some steps to provide more details on what you have achieved. You could use dummy data. Or send some of the HTML source code if it is a formatting issue. Or send screen prints. If you can’t even get it that far then…
Provide source code
Send the exact block of code (or specify in my sample code) that your page is choking on. If I can’t see any issues with what you’ve sent, then I may ask for more. But without seeing your code and knowing exactly what you are doing, it’s hard to make even educated guesses about what may be wrong. And don’t worry, I won’t make fun of your coding practices. Mine aren’t all that great either. I may provide a little constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement, but I wouldn’t get too high and mighty. That would be too “pot calling the kettle black”. Although I have seem some pretty raggedy code that deserves some chastising.
Provide motivation and incentive
This one is interesting. We all like to be motivated. And the best form of motivation is to provide incentive. Call it ‘positive feedback’ if you will. As I mentioned, my one article generates about two out of the blue requests per year. No big deal, right? Not really, except for the fact that I am married with three kids. Work full-time on a day job and spend all of my spare, non-family time pursuing my own coding projects (and they move very slowly). The best incentive and motivation story I have is that a person sent me an email asking for help. They had a prototype and could tell me exactly what they were stuck on. At the time, I was also working part-time for someone and replied back to the person that it would probably be several days before I could free up to look at his issue since I had other priorities. Within an hour, I got an email from PayPal that the person had just sent me $20. His note said that my article really helped him save a lot of time from reinventing the wheel and that he just wanted to send a token of appreciation. No strings attached. Of course, after a gesture like that, I couldn’t just leave him hanging. So I worked it into my schedule and got some code back to him later that night. Why? Because I was grateful that someone had taken the time, effort, energy and their own resources to say Thanks. Now, do I expect all requests to come with $20. Nope. But every little bit helps bump it up in the priority list. I’d love to work for free helping others out, but if I were to do that, I’d want quit coding and help the elderly and handicapped - people who really need assistance. Does it always have to be monetary? Nope, how about a blog entry about my little bit of code. That works for me.
Wave me off as soon as possible if you come up with a solution or no longer need assistance
This one is frustrating. I helped the first few people who had requests because I had the bandwidth back then. Then I ran into a few people that asked for assistance and then I took the time to help them. When I replied back with their solution, they said that they either no longer needed the solution or had solved it themselves. Sure would have been nice to get a quick email cancelling the request for assistance. Those couple of incidences kind of burned me out from jumping up and helping people without doing a little back and forth with them first.
Summarize for others
This doesn’t apply too much to this site, but if you are requesting assistance on a forum and you get your answer elsewhere, kindly follow-up your original post with either a summary of the solution or a link to where you cross-posted your request. This helps everyone.
Thank your sources
Nothing like sending off a response to someone’s request and never hearing back from said person. A quick “Thanks” isn’t asking too much, is it?

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Posted by Matt Smith | Filed Under General 

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