[SGVLUG] Asking questions (was misguided...)

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of David Lawyer
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 09:32:36AM -0700, Emerson, Tom wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > Behalf Of David Lawyer
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 08:00:09AM -0700, Tom Emerson wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > And to follow on ... [here's how] to ask a good question ...
> > > > 
> > > >      http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
> > > 
> > > I didn't think this was very good.  ...
> > 
> > Do you have a better set of guidelines?  ...
> 
> One can just use, say Google.

Interesting.  "search google first" happens to be one of his SUGGESTIONS, but that in and of itself doesn't teach a person "how to ask a better question"

> So I think that just using trial and error may be the best method.  A
> major problem is selecting search terms.  One soon discovers that
> searching on a generalized error message (minus numbers unique to your
> situation, like tty2) works well.

How about a case where there are no error messages?  [real life case -- in fact, it just happened last night]:  My mom's computer simply "won't start" -- what's wrong?

If I were to put on my newbie hat and post the above question to a newsgroup, forum, or list such as this, what are the odds of getting a good answer? [oh, wait, that was the lightning discussion -- wrong thread]  "searching google" for "computer won't start" is way to general as well [go ahead, try it...] and any reasonable amount of "trial and error searches" isn't likely to narrow down the results or find an applicable solution in my lifetime or the next.

Now suppose I elaborate with: the BIOS "post" doesn't show up, the drives don't spin, but the fans do [and the power does shut off if you hold the switch for 4 seconds].  Unplugging the DATA cables from the drives DOES allow the drives to spin up when power is on, but still "nothing" shows up on the screen.  The system was working roughly an hour or two prior (she had shut it down to eat dinner) and finally, the system is less than a year old.

This is perhaps too specific (bios does NOT pass the POST stage, in fact, the post doesn't even appear to start) yet all the search terms are too general (bios, post, start [or not], drive, spin, etc.)  As much as I love google, it still isn't going to tell me much -- separating the wheat from the chaff is still too difficult here.

OTOH, if I'd seen this question, complete with the extended description of the problem, the answer I'd give would be "EXPERIENCE tells me that this is likely a bad motherboard or CPU", but this begs the question, "how do you search 'my experience' with google?"