As an engineering major, I’ve had to ask many questions to understand the many concepts that I have come to learn in university, but I had never thought about the “way” that I have been asking them. Sometimes, my questions might be focused with a specific inquiry in mind, and sometimes it would be an extremely vague question that often left my TAs baffled by my lack of intelligence. I have come to learn that asking questions in a certain type of manner yield more relevant answers that I can apply to my studies. These types of questions involve a certain level of effort and diligence from the person that is asking and should be structured in such a way that others can easily understand the problem at hand and give defined answers that could lead to a solution.
Generally, a smart question can be identified by certain characteristics. If the question exhibits a certain level of understanding of the topic, it encourages discussion as it may be detailed enough for someone to glance at and immediately know a solution, or at least a step in the right direction. Smart questions can also be characterized by steps the user has attempted to solve the problem with, in order to provide more details about the problem and goal itself. In StackOverflow, a question posed by a user describes his problem with parsing input in c++ and comparing it to a float. He also posted his code and the exact error he received while compiling his code. While not being entirely grammatically correct, it gives enough detail to elicit substantial answers to his problem. A link to the question can be found here.
Contrary to smart questions, stupid questions can be characterized by being vague, uninformative, or very basic. These questions demonstrate a lack of understanding from the user and a lack of research on their end that invites a negative response from others. In one question found in StackOverflow, a homework question was posted by a user that complained about their code solution not being the correct answer. They provide few details about why this is the case and poses an open-ended question instead. Many of the people that responded gave sarcastic answers or unhelpful comments. A link to the question can be found here.
For us to communicate effectively, we need to be able to convey the necessary information to other parties for us to get something relevant in return. If we aren’t able to accurately describe the problems we are facing, it may be difficult receiving help. Thus, it is imperative that we learn to ask smarter questions to gain more important information efficiently.