[zz_communication]Two email tips when asking for help.

Email tip1: When asking for help with a problem, also mention what you've already tried

When you ask a question,you should also mention what steps you've already taken whenattempting to solve it on your own.

First of all, it saves the people who decide to help youwith your problem from exploring lines of investigationwhich you've already tried(and which you know don't work)."I tried setting the timeout to 60 seconds before issuingthe call,but it still failed withthe error ERROR_NETWORK_UNREACHABLE."

Second, it cuts down on noise on the discussion list.

— Try setting the timeout to a higher value.

"I already tried that; it didn't work."

Third, it demonstrates that youcared enough about the problem totry to solve it yourself.It's surprising how many questions come in from people whodidn't even make the slightest effort to solve their problem on their own."When I issue the command show active,it shows the active tags.How do I filter it to show only active tags that I created?"

— This is explained in the online help: show active -?.If the online help is unclear, please describe what you're havingtrouble with and we'll work to improve the documentation.

"Thanks! The explanation in the help is just fine."

(Yes, that was an actual response.)

Email tip2: When you say that something didn't work, you have to say how it didn't work

I illustrate this point with an imaginary conversation,inspired by actual ones I've seen(and, occasionally, been a frustrated party to).

From: X

I want to do ABC, but I don't have a DEF.Anybody know of a workaround?

Somebody has an idea:

From: Y

Try mounting this ISO file into a virtual machine and trying the ABC from there.

Unfortunately, it didn't work:

From: X

I tried that, but it didn't work.Any other ideas?

When somebody suggests a troubleshooting stepor a workaround,but when you try it and it doesn't work,you need to say how it didn't work.The person who made the suggestion had some expectationthat it would work,and just saying that it didn't work will probably justgenerate an unhelpful response like "Well, try again."Which doesn't help anybody.

In this example (which I just made up),a better response from X would be something like this:

• "I tried that, but it didn't work. Virtual PC refused to load the ISO image, putting up the error message 'The CD image could not be captured. You may not have the proper access privileges to the CD image files.'"
• "I tried that, but it didn't work. Virtual PC loaded the ISO image, but when I tried to view the contents of the CD, I got 'Not ready reading drive D.'"
• "I tried that, but it didn't work. Virtual PC loaded the ISO image, but when I double-clicked the ABC file, I got the same error that I got when I tried to do ABC directly."

Each of these is a different failure mode that suggestsa different course of action.

And then the response probably won't be, "Well, try again."