Want Better Answers? Ask 'SMART'
11 Sep 2024
Upvoted Questions vs. Downvoted Questions
As a software engineering student, I often encounter problems that require debugging. Fortunately, there are sources like Stack Overflow available online, where I can find other people’s questions that may help me debug my code. One thing that always stands out to me when I visit the website is the ratings of the questions. Some questions get hundreds of upvotes, while others receive negative downvotes. Not only are the answers rated, but the questions themselves are as well. So, what causes such a huge difference in the way questions are rated?
What Are “NOT SMART” Questions?
Before asking someone a question, did you conduct any research on your own? Did you read through manuals or documentation? For example, if you ask a question like, “How much is this assignment worth? How badly will it affect my grade?” this is considered a “not smart” question because it clearly shows that you didn’t make any effort to figure it out yourself. In response, the professor might say, “Read the syllabus.” If you had done that, you would already know how much the assignment is worth and be able to calculate its impact on your grade. Similarly, on Stack Overflow, questions like this usually get downvotes. Consider this question posted on Stack Overflow: “How to convert str to int?” It has -29 downvotes with two answers. One of the answers says, “A quick Google search provides some documentation.” While this might seem impolite, it isn’t necessarily rude—it reflects that no research or willingness to learn was demonstrated by the person asking the question. The amount of effort you put into asking a question often determines the quality of the answers you receive. Poorly formed questions lead to less useful and inefficient answers.
What Are “SMART” Questions?
“Smart” questions include a clear subject, symptoms of the problem, a chronological explanation of the issue, evidence of your own problem-solving efforts, and curiosity. For example, take the question: “Scanner is skipping nextLine() after using next() or nextFoo()?” In the post, the user explains the issue they are encountering and provides a portion of the code, along with notes describing the symptoms at each step. This makes it easy to understand where the problem lies. Additionally, the person explains how they tested their code, identified where the issue occurs, and what happens when a particular line is removed. This level of detail demonstrates the effort put into the question, which resulted in 882k views and 963 upvotes. Because of this “smart” question, the answers were detailed and helpful, with one answer receiving 1163 upvotes and another 279. This example shows that well-constructed questions lead to more efficient and effective answers.
Ask Questions the “SMART” Way
Learning how to ask “smart” questions is crucial because efficiency and effectiveness are essential in software engineering. From my experience, I’ve learned that the smarter the question, the better the answers you get. I’ve also realized that this principle of asking “smart” questions isn’t limited to coding—it applies to any topic.
The next time you ask a question, make sure you’re asking it in a “smart” way to get the best possible results.