Introduction

This is a small tutorial on how to best get help and ask questions in the SlingCommunity. The kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will help you how to ask questions in a way more likely to get you a satisfactory answer.

The first thing to understand is that everyone here is a volunteer, or a Slingbox user like yourself. Most folks actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If they didn't, they wouldn't be here. If you pose an interesting question to chew on, they will be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help develop greater understanding, and often reveal problems that might not have ahve been noticed or thought about otherwise.

There are many people who just want to use the software, and who have no interest in learning technical details. For most people, a computer is merely a tool, a means to an end; they have more important things to do and lives to live. We all acknowledge that, and don't expect everyone to take an interest in the technical matters that fascinate us. Nevertheless, our style of answering questions is tuned for people who do take such an interest and are willing to be active participants in problem-solving. That's not going to change. Nor should it; if it did, we would become less effective at the things we do best. We're volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. Some folks filter ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear to be losers in order to spend their question-answering time more efficiently, on winners.

If you find this attitude obnoxious, condescending, or arrogant, check your assumptions. We're not asking you to genuflect to us in fact, most of us would love nothing more than to deal with you as an equal and welcome you into our culture... if you put in the effort required to make that possible.

But it's simply not efficient for us to try to help people who are not willing to help themselves. It's OK to be ignorant; it's not OK to play stupid. So, while it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of attitude that leads to competence - alert, thoughtful, observant, and willing to be an active partner in developing a solution. If you can't live with this sort of discrimination, we suggest you pay somebody for a commercial support contract instead of asking slingers to personally donate help to you. The best way to get a rapid and responsive answer is to ask it like a person with smarts, confidence, and clues who just happens to need help on one particular problem.

Page 2: Before You Ask >>

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