Hartti Suomela's Forum Nokia Blog

Java ME and Flash Lite expert in Forum Nokia Americas, Mountain View. Besides mobile technologies, interested in HCI and the use of technology in sports.

Writing an effective question on discussion boards

hartti | 07 April, 2007 02:39

During the past year and three months I have read I would say all the FN discussion board postings on Java boards, and many other postings from other sections. There are a number of things which I have noticed (in addition to the fact that there are huge number of really really useful posts and the regular and occasional contributors are really doing a phenomenal job in there!):

People ask what is wrong with their program, but then they fail to provide necessary information for the readers to do any troubleshooting. Like did you get an exception, what line of code cause the exception, what device was used, what the application tries to do, etc. - It is like calling a car repair shop saying: " My car does not move. How can I fix it?" (well, do you have the keys, do you have gas in the tank, is the battery out, etc...)
Same questions get asked over and over again. This is not surprising as sometimes things change rapidly and if the answer was "NO" two months ago it might be "YES" tomorrow. In many cases it looks like though, that people do not use the search or even read the FAQ postings, which have been prepared for answering the frequently asked questions. (Yes, searching might take more time and sometimes the search just does not return the right links - maybe because of different spelling...)
Java questions are posted in Symbian forums and vice versa. I think I have moved at least one posting every day from Java forums to Symbian. Part of the issue is likely that the title of the forum does not include Java (or Symbian) in it, it can be only seen in the forum hierarchy at the top of the page. Maybe a place for some usability studies...
Occasional crosspostings. Posting your question on multiple boards does not really help. It just fragments the discussions and makes the future searches less effective. Please, one detailed posting per question in a fitting section.

And finally, to make my posting less negative, I just have to share these two great pages with you. A cool concept phone from a high-school kid and a retro-case for your mobile phone. Happy Easter!