How to answer technical questions on 21st century social media sites

I tend to have some opinions on how to communicate on forums that came from Usenet style etiquette. There were a lot of Usenet Nazis who were very rigid about adhering to the code, which I think contributed to the demise of Usenet. Web-based forums are the natural successor, and like much of the rest of the modern world, have dumbed down things substantially, so you can participate with little or no knowledge of the rules.

I think most people who answer questions on public forums are more on top of things than people who ask questions, but if you read the SolidWorks forums for a while you start to notice there are some exceptions to that. There”s a guy on the SW forum who seems to blanket the forum with responses to everything, and usually in the form of  “did you try X”, or “here”s a link to my Aunt Gertrude”s macramame project, did you look there?” The thing is that he doesn”t seem to know anything about SolidWorks in much detail. If you read his posts, it”s like bad search engine results where you have a lot of nothing.

Anyway, you can see that this is a bit of  a pet peeve with me. It”s not possible to “police” social media, and even if it were, who would want to do it? Unfortunately, bozo filters that we used to use on Usenet don”t work on 21st century social media. Modern social media is so … happy, and artificial, like everyone”s had a hit or two of Prozac after lunch.  Usenet was more prone to bullies, but also you were more likely to hear what someone really thought, not a watered down, milquetoast filtered smiley version where anything negative is removed.

When you”re talking about tech support, there are a lot of pet peeves on both sides of the subscription money. Users hate being asked endless irrelevant questions, and tech support people hate getting questions with so little information that they are impossible to answer. This is why SolidWorks came up with the SolidWorks RX. RX digs out most of the answers to annoying questions, like video card and driver version. If you”re sending questions to SolidWorks or resellers, Alin is right.

Understand the question

This is one I”ve been guilty of. Make sure you really understand the question that is being asked. Sometimes you might have to ask for clarification. What I do sometimes is give a provisional answer, such as “if you mean X, then the answer is Y. If you mean something other than that, please clarify.” It”s embarrassing when you (I) go off half-cocked and have to take it all back later.

Stars

If a site offers stars or points or has a counter for how many times you respond, that site is more likely to attract obsessive/compulsive types who will do anything to watch that number tick up. This is part of the reason I find eng-tips so annoying, and a non-positive trait of the SolidWorks forums. It doesn”t have to  be that way, if everyone acts like adults and only answers when they have something of value to say, the points or whatever could have meaning. I”m not sure why it annoys me so much that some people are obsessively driven by valueless rewards.

Don”t write too much

I used to love Ed Eaton”s responses to tough questions because he had a lot of insight. The thing I hated was trying to read his whole response. Ed always seemed to write about 5x more than he needed to. I”m guilty of this too, although maybe not in the same gifted way that Ed did it. Anyone who has written a book of over 1000 pages probably cannot claim innocence on this count. Answers are hard to read if they are too long. If you write something long, try to break the answer up with headings like this post so a reader can skip to the part that interests them, without just skipping the whole thing.

A picture is worth 1000 words

There are times when no matter how well you describe something, just showing a picture of it will do what your words could not do. Real life is stranger than Photoshop. You know when you”re just trying to rip out an answer really quickly, because the answer is easy, or at least you think it is? And you just type something, make a few assumptions, and then off to whatever is next? Well, people sometimes don”t get those answers. It”s better to illustrate the answer with images. That way more people understand it and your time was better spent. Images do take a while to set up properly, but the SW Forum allows

Spilling coints

I don”t care if it”s a typo or something you”ve always misspelled – spelling counts. Automatic spelling checkers don”t always get words that look like other words – and those are the most dangerous, because they can totally change the meaning of a sentence. Engineers are number people, and probably the worst spellers of the professions, aside from professional athletes. I”m a bit of an anomaly. I”m definitely a number person, but I”m a stickler for spelling, even if I don”t care so much for grammar or the finer points of proper writing.

The SolidWorks forums are notorious for misuse of the English language, I guess because they include so many folks for whom English is a second language. Spelling, or typos can be the difference between understanding something and not. Sometimes I read things on the forums that are either spelled with text message short hand or so badly spelled I can”t tell what they are trying to say. I”m glad I don”t have to try to communicate in a language other than my native tongue.

Anyway, spelling does count, especially when you are communicating in writing. Take the time to get it right.

Facebook and Twitter

To me, Facebook and Twitter are not meant for long form multi-media answers to technical questions. I think they are great for directing someone to a better resource where the answer exists or where it can be explored. Personally, when it comes to social media, I make an effort to separate my work and personal lives. Facebook and Twitter are two places people give mixed messages with sometimes disastrous results. I”ve seen a guy destroy his engineering career on Twitter. It was ugly to watch.

Facebook and Twitter may not be the right venues, but YouTube is fantastic. Video is a great way to answer questions. Even in our media obsessed time, I think video is underutilized. You can”t convey all forms of information through video, but if it”s a response you can wrap up in under 5 minutes, and it is at all visual, video is your friend. There are a lot of video tools to use, including Jing.

Are you obsessed with how 16 year olds are using social media? Well, how do I say this? I”m not. 16 year olds are not working for a living. They have different goals, are worried about different stuff, and I don”t understand why business communication thinks it needs to be hip by emulating 16 year olds. Use tools that make sense in ways that makes sense. Don”t worry about 16 year olds.

Have a little compassion

This is sometimes difficult for me. Compassion is not what”s difficult, it”s deciding who deserves compassion. When you have someone who is willfully being a butt-head and not following the good advice they have already been given, I think it is excusable to suspend this rule. Sometimes people on the forums really don”t want help, they just want someone to validate their idea that the world is effed up, and only they are right. It”s a fight right from the beginning.

And then there”s the saying “God helps those who help themselves”, right? Some people think they are simply entitled to other people giving them answers they should be learning how to figure out themselves. I tend to give this type a bit of a hard time. Some people are just in it for the shortcut, they don”t understand or care that the process of learning is valuable in itself. The difference between accumulating knowledge, which has little value, and learning to think critically.

I wasn”t born with all the answers. I had to figure out most of what I learned for myself, and others did help me along the way. If the answers aren”t that valuable to you that you”re not willing to put in some effort, then you should just quit. Honestly, that”s how I see it. I take a lot of abuse for being kind of snooty. Maybe they”re right, who knows, but I don”t owe them anything.

On the other hand, I”m very willing to sit and help people who are genuinely trying and are excited to learn and apply new stuff. People helped me along when I was coming up, and the only way for me to repay that kindness is to pass it along to the next person who wants to accept it.

I have enjoyed my work as trainer, tech support, technical writer, public speaker, user group presenter, blogger, and other roles where I help pass skills on to other people. There are certain attitudes, though, that wear me thin. I”ve been known to snip at noobs on the forums, or maybe poke fun at people who just want a hand out, they don”t care about understanding anything. This is at the root of my preference for examples over tutorials. Examples show decision making process. Tutorials show mechanical actions. To quote Dex from the diner in Star Wars (Attack of the Clones): “I would expect you Jedi to understand the difference between knowledge and wisdom.”