How many times do you ask questions per day? Are they smart questions? Asking questions are vital to learning and should be encouraged to clear up any confusion, however, asking bad questions is simply annoying, inconsiderate, and shows lack of effort. Asking someone a question is asking someone to take time out of their day to help you, so it is critical you don’t waste their time and make it productive for you, the person helping you, and even other people who may benefit from your question. So, when and how do you ask a good question? You ask a question after you’ve done all that you can to find the answer yourself. And to do that, you may use any tool including searching the web, seeing if it has already been asked or even answered, looking at FAQs, etc. So, what is a smart question? A smart question mainly consists of showing that you have put effort into researching it yourself first, being concise, giving any necessary information that may help, and being clear of what you’re trying to solve.
Asking smart questions is beneficial for everyone involved. It helps you (the questioner) receive smart answers that answer the question you are asking or at least points you to the right direction. Asking smart questions also benefits the person answering because it shows where people may be confused and could address it or even make changes. Additionally, it also helps bystanders that may also have the same question or for others to just learn.
An example of a smart question asked in StackOverflow was regarding JavaScript closures. The subject line was “How do JavaScript closures work?”. Its description included a paragraph of his current background knowledge on JavaScript and a second very short paragraph on what he did before asking the question. This is an example of a smart question, which 7600 people thought the same as well, because it has a concise and clear subject line, gave any necessary information in the description, and showed that he put in effort to research beforehand. His smart question led to many smart and quite long and well-structured answers that include examples.
An example of a bad question (though the question is liked many times) is someone asking how to remove an item from an array. Its subject line was fine, however the person could have gotten the answer him or herself through documentation because it uses a simple method (splice). Furthermore, the description wasn’t descriptive on what the exact goal was, and the answers also reflected this. People gave multiple answers because they did not know what the questioner wanted to know exactly. For example, an answer was given to how to remove one item or multiple items. Another person also gave multiple answers, and it also questioned what the questioner wanted to do: remove the item completely or make it blank.