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Comment by alecbz | Hacker News Reader

> ..which is just lazy. If you're not willing to do the work to solve your problem, why should we?

Eh, don't think I agree here. The initial ask is low-effort but so is the initial response expected ("I could help, what's up?"). It seems fair to want to aim for something like:

    A: low effort ask
    B: low effort response
    A: high effort ask now that you know someone's listening
    B: high effort response

to avoid things like:

    A: high effort ask  
    (no one's around, effort wasted)

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I disagree with a "high effort ask" being a wasted effort if no-one's around.

Just because no-one's around now doesn't mean someone won't be around later. And writing down your thoughts can often be enough to crystalise your thinking to the point of having a new idea about a solution. So, you've either solved your problem for yourself, or you can share it with the person that does help in the end.

If you're asking for help it's useful to show where you're up to in your thinking and giving details on what you've tried already.

Furthermore, once you've written it out once...you can copy and paste that to ask someone else later, if you don't get a response!

Yep, this is what I do! If I have a complicated issue and Google won't solve it, I'll write up a clear, context-inclusive explanation of the issue and what I'm looking for, then paste it into a couple different groups. Usually, if Google can't help, it's too specific of a problem for it to be likely that a tech help group can solve it also - but sometimes it works, or people have other ideas.

    A: high effort ask

From experience, this is never wasted. At the contrary, stating a problem clearly very often helps finding the solution, without bothering anybody else :)

In an asynchronous medium like Slack or IRC, the effort _isn't_ wasted, because the question will stay there, allowing people to see it later who weren't even around when the question was first asked.

Just like you don't email someone saying "Hey" waiting for a reply before you ask your question.

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