[Welcome to the only canned, pro-forma question in DHanswers!]
Gee, I'm wondering if you can tell me a little more about this site. What's it for? What kind of questions should I be asking? Any tips and tricks? And who is here to help me?
So, what is this Q&A forum, and what can I do here?
(7 posts) (4 voices)-
Posted 7 years ago Permalink
-
Well, Bethany, I'm so glad you asked :)
Let me start with the question "what kind of questions should I be asking?". My take on that is that it's probably best to not hesitate in asking any kind of question (within the context of a community-oriented digital humanities forum – I'm not sure it's the best venue for, say, advice on choosing a school in your local area:).
The hardest thing to judge may be the scope of questions: is it too trivial or technical? is it too broad or theoretical? Personally, I think anything goes. Let the forum community decide how much time and energy is warranted – if you have a question, ask it.
For people with questions, I think there are two main uses for the site:
1) searching/browsing for answers on previously asked questions
2) asking a new question and hopefully getting an answer (or more) fairly quicklyGetting answers quickly was a major part of the design of the site, and in particular the twitter integration. When you post a new question it gets tweeted under the site's own twitter account (not necessarily your own, though you can do that too). We anticipate that there will be a good number of followers of the twitter account and that the question will be seen and addressed in a timely manner.
I think the best way to view this site is as crowd-sourced digital humanities expertise!
Posted 7 years ago Permalink -
Wow, that sounds great! I'll definitely start following @DHanswers on Twitter, so I can keep up with the latest questions.
Are there other ways I can follow particular conversations? RSS feeds? Email notifications? And how can I tell if a question has gotten an especially good answer?
Posted 7 years ago Permalink -
I think Stéfan has answered "what kind of questions should I be asking" pretty well, so I'll tackle some tips and tricks for asking good questions--the kind that are likely to garner the best responses.
- Be as specific as possible in the little space you have for the question. For example, "Linux command line conversion of doc to docx" is a pretty specific question, but "document help" would not be. The more specific the question, the greater the chance someone will answer it quickly.
- Within the body of the post itself, take a moment to document the process you already went through to find an answer. For example, "I looked at Forum X but it was unhelpful" will allow us to be more efficient in our answer for we will neither have to go look at Forum X ourselves nor tell you to go look at Forum X. Instead, we can begin to find a better path to the answer, together.
- Whenever possible, if you are looking for help with a specific problem (tool usage comes to mind here), describe the environment in which it occurs, the diagnostic steps you took to figure out where the problem is occurring, any changes you made to the software or configuration, and, if you know, what you think you might try/what might be the problem, even if you’re hesitant to do it.
- When asking about code, remember that just saying "it doesn't work" is not the most helpful thing to do. Instead, something like "I am getting this error [paste it here] when I do [x task]. Here is the code around that line" (or something similar) is really helpful.
- Follow up--you can do that in DHAnswers by marking an answer as "best answer" or even just replying to the thread. Even if a suggestion fixes the problem, let the person know that it’s fixed. Speaking for myself, I know that when I am asked to help with something and I offer suggestions, I automatically care about the result.
As to the question "And who is here to help me?" the short answer is we don't know yet, but hopefully everyone. Ok, that's not entirely true. The DHAnswers team has invited a range of folks with skills and experience in many areas to keep an eye on topics and take a bit of ownership of certain categories. But as more people use DHAnswers and add to the collective knowledgebase, we expect the core group to shift over time. We recommend viewing users' profile pages as they answer your questions, to learn a little more about the people behind the username.
At this time the core DHAnswers team includes the first three people writing in this topic (Bethany Nowviskie, Stéfan Sinclair, Julie Meloni) plus Joe Gilbert (who did most of the work).
Posted 7 years ago Permalink -
Joe Gilbert
AdminReplying to @Bethany Nowviskie's post:
Bethany, there are lots of ways to keep track of the conversation in addition to following @DHAnswers. You can follow RSS feeds for all recent Q&A messages or new questions only. Look for links like the one at the bottom of this thread for question-specific feeds. There are category and tag feeds, too!
At the top of the Q&A thread, you'll find a link to add this question to your favorites. By changing some settings in your profile (look for you user name at the very top-right of the page), you can subscribe to an RSS feed of your favorite questions or even receive emails when new things are posted to your favorite questions (or all questions if you're a real DHAnswers enthusiast!).
As Julie says, questioners (and moderators) can award well-answered questions with a soon-to-be-coveted green "best answer" check mark. Questions can have multiple "best answers," so feel free to be generous to good responses. On the front page, you can search for only questions that have best answers (if you're looking for existing solutions) or only those without a best answer (if you're feeling helpful).
Posted 7 years ago Permalink -
Joe Gilbert
AdminIf a question can be solved by a bit of code, you can follow the example listed below the "post my question" button to format and highlight syntax.
For example, by surrounding this text with the right "pre" tag:
function hello_world() {
echo "Hello, World!";
}we can generate this PHP snippet:
1 2 3
function hello_world() { echo "Hello, World!"; }
Posted 7 years ago Permalink -
Bethany Nowviskie
AdminBest AnswerMy goodness, the community of digital humanists here at DHanswers really is helpful! And I see we've written even more tips on using the site!
Thanks for creating this space, ACH and ProfHacker.
[Exeunt, pursued by a Bear.]
Posted 7 years ago Permalink
Question Closed
This topic has been closed to new replies.
