Before asking a technical question by email, or in a newsgroup, or on a
website chat board, do the following:

1.

Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
2.

Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
3.

Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
4.

Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
5.

Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
6.

If you are a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the
source code.

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these
things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy
sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have
learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people
who have demonstrated that they can learn from the answers.

Use tactics like doing a Google search on the text of whatever error
message you get (and search Google groups as well as web pages). This
might well take you straight to fix documentation or a mailing list
thread that will answer your question. Even if it doesn't, saying “I
googled on the following phrase but didn't get anything that looked
useful” is a good thing to be able to put in email or news postings
requesting help.

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get
hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that you
have put thought and effort into solving your problem before asking for
help, the more likely you are to actually get help.

Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not; you aren't,
after all, paying for the service. You will earn an answer, if you earn
it, by asking a question that is substantial, interesting, and
thought-provoking — one that implicitly contributes to the experience of
the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.

On the other hand, making it clear that you are able and willing to help
in the process of developing the solution is a very good start. “Would
someone provide a pointer?”, “What is my example missing?” and “What
site should I have checked?” are more likely to get answered than
“Please post the exact procedure I should use.” because you're making it
clear that you're truly willing to complete the process if someone can
simply point you in the right direction.

(taken from: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - it
probably won't hurt to read the whole thing)

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