Smart Questions, Good Answers

Is there such thing as a stupid question?

I’ve had instructors address a whole class and say, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question.” I now know that is in fact not true because I’ve challenged the statement and received the appropriate dumb-stricken, annoyed look. There are definitely stupid questions, and along with that, usually unhelpful answers. Though we all might be guilty of being callous and making people victim to our poorly formed questions, there are steps we can take to ask smarter questions that hopefully don’t illicit the dreaded “rtfm” or “stfw” response.

What’s a smart question?

Stack Overflow, a question and answer site for programmers, is a great resource for anyone who may have issues with code or who may simply want to learn new or different methods of doing something. There I found examples of good questions and bad questions, which could probably be improved.

In the following example, we examine the components of a decent question. In this case, the asker is trying to figure out a way to know why Node Creation Takes too long and failed in fabric blockchain.

Q: Node Creation Takes too long and failed

I installed Blockchain platform v2 beta then I tried to configure it and add nodes. My Question is: is there anyone faced long delay in node creation like CA node for example. I faced this problem and cannot find from where I can check logs.

A: 
Here the link to the official IBP documentation where is explained how to retrieve and visualize logs.

IBM Blockchain Platform - Viewing your node logs

I also suggest you to check if there is any issue in your kubernetes cluster where the IBP is running.

Conclusion

When we rely on others’ generosity and expertise to provide answers to our questions, it should hold that the question we ask should be one that leads to efficient and effective help that not only benefits us, but also the people we ask and others who might ask the same question in the future. Thus, if you have a question… make it a smart one! Asking questions may not always get you the best answer, but asking them in a way that will make others want to answer them will increase the success of finding a good solution and make it a positive experience on all sides.