<story><title>Why Won&apos;t You Answer My Question?</title><url>http://rion.io/2017/02/09/why-wont-you-answer-my-question/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>drblast</author><text>Haha, yeah go ahead and try to fight this battle. You&amp;#x27;ll lose.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m constantly baffled by bug reports I receive. From other people who work at my company. A tech company. A large one. You&amp;#x27;ve heard of it.&lt;p&gt;We log every operation in our API. I cache errors, and the API returns a JSON formatted error with a GUID that correlates to the operation that failed, so if I have a GUID I can look at exactly what happened every step of the way, and what went wrong, in the logs.&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, all I need to fix a bug or tell you why you&amp;#x27;re having a problem is the GUID from the error message. You don&amp;#x27;t even need to ASK a question. I log &lt;i&gt;stack traces&lt;/i&gt; of any exceptions that occur so our logs are almost as good as running the software through a debugger.&lt;p&gt;The bug reports I&amp;#x27;d expect and want?&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;quot;Hey, I got this error message that I copy&amp;#x2F;pasted below...can you tell me what&amp;#x27;s going on?&amp;quot;

  &amp;lt;two line error message&amp;gt;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I have NEVER gotten that bug report. The bug reports I get?&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;quot;Hey I think your system is down.&amp;quot;

  &amp;quot;Is something wrong with your system?&amp;quot;

  &amp;quot;I tried to do something and got an error. Is something wrong? No, I don&amp;#x27;t know what the error was.&amp;quot;

  &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re getting this weird error when we try X. I dunno, it was just weird. It works now though.&amp;quot;

  &amp;quot;I think the data you&amp;#x27;re returning is wrong.&amp;quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Or my favorite:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey, we&amp;#x27;ve been discussing this issue we&amp;#x27;ve had with &amp;lt;upstream system&amp;gt; that depends on your system. We assumed your system has been down for the last couple of days and have been blaming your team in email threads you&amp;#x27;re not on because &amp;lt;upstream system&amp;gt; isn&amp;#x27;t working. Nobody told you or your team. When is your system going to be fixed? No we don&amp;#x27;t have any examples or any record of error messages from your system.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;(Resolution: problem is bug in &amp;lt;upstream system&amp;gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Won&apos;t You Answer My Question?</title><url>http://rion.io/2017/02/09/why-wont-you-answer-my-question/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ColinWright</author><text>This problem of people asking bad questions has been around a long time.  A really long time.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a resource to deal with it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mikeash.com&amp;#x2F;getting_answers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mikeash.com&amp;#x2F;getting_answers.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s another, somewhat harsher version that preceded that:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.catb.org&amp;#x2F;esr&amp;#x2F;faqs&amp;#x2F;smart-questions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.catb.org&amp;#x2F;esr&amp;#x2F;faqs&amp;#x2F;smart-questions.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;These were discussed on the C2 wiki a &lt;i&gt;long&lt;/i&gt; time ago:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.c2.com&amp;#x2F;?HowToAskQuestionsTheSmartWay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wiki.c2.com&amp;#x2F;?HowToAskQuestionsTheSmartWay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;But the issues remain - people are sometimes lazy, sometimes asses, sometimes jerks, and often suffer from learned helplessness.[0]  In each case, answering their question is not always the right thing to do.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Learned_helplessness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Learned_helplessness&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>