Reflection on Smart Questions
28 Jan 2026
Online forums are sometimes not the kindest. In the pursuit of knowledge, asking seemingly harmless or innocuous questions can elicit very strong responses. If you are looking for a candid and sarcastic review on how to ask appropriate questions on open-source forums, look no further than How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, by Eric Raymond.
How to not get your head bitten off...
Throughout this article, Raymond outlines that essentially in writing it would be called having respect for your audience. Making their post as clear and concise as possible. Showing that they have thoroughly researched the subject matter, so as to not ask redundant or oxymoronic questions. To show constraint by not overloading the reader with unnecessary information. Such as extensive code or relevant test cases. To write with grammatically correct & punctuation. As well as walk the audience through your thought processes chronologically. Not to start in the middle and expect to know how you got to the end.
We want to keep these things in mind to respect our community as our peers. In doing so, we want to respect their expertise and time. With all of this in mind, let's do a comparative analysis of Stack Overflow's posts. Seeing who gets the best ROI from the quality of their questions.
What to avoid…
To begin, let's look at the post by Ebrium, “The differences between the operators '==' and '=' [duplicate].” Throughout the response we can determine both the frustration and lack of research that was done in asking this question. The question has a sizable amount of views, with a significant number of downvotes. Of the minimal responses returned to this post, the top answer is a link to a Wikipedia article on JavaScript basics. Which could be interpreted as a nice way of saying, Do your research and get back to me. One particular moderator commented, “I think it would be appropriate to give this person feedback that SO is not the place to ask conceptual questions about programming, particularly basic ones.” They then followed this up with saying to another commenter to remember to be kind during the learning process for people. In Raymond's eyes, this would be a low-level question that should have done more research before reaching out.
What you should do….
Now we look at a post by Alexey Tseitlin, “Remove smallest number in JS Array.” Tseitlin’s question is clear & unambiguous. Additionally, they have shown that there have been multiple attempts to resolve the issue. Displaying due diligence on the side of the poster. Not only that, but they post the current code snippet, along with the revisions they have made in order to improve the functionality. As well as stated the recurring issues to better guide responders to the desired solution. From a formatting perspective, the post is not lengthy & not lacking in information. Everything within the inquiry is clear and grammatically correct. The quality of this question is reflected in the quality & number of responses. The majority of which are positive & outline multiple different ways to resolve the Tseitlin issue.