How to Ask Good Questions When Building a Homelab
How to Ask A Good Question
Asking a good question, starts by answering common responses someone is going to ask you right after you ask your own question. This saves time, headache, and repeating steps for things you may have already tried before.
The advantages of joining our discord to ask questions:
- Faster responses
- More flexibility
- You can add screenshots, code blocks, videos, and more.
- It helps create a community of individuals that love the same thing.
What you Should Include When Asking for Help
- The situation
- Your goal
- Any error messages you can observe
- What you have already tried
- Signs and symptoms that may help people figure out what is wrong
- Screenshots
- Your Network Topology if you have one (If not, you really should create one for your homelab!)
- The Software you are trying to work with
- If it is from one of our videos, a link to the video and a timestamp!
Asking a Bad Question
I see often people claim they ask a question when they really just complained or made a statement.
For example, "Hey guys I tried to install Proxmox but it clearly did not work. I think the video is outdated and I am extremely frustrated that I wasted 20 minutes of my time. I left a mean comment on the video and I hope this channel fails. "
The comment above does not answer ANY of the 9 points I mentioned in the "How to Ask A Good Question" section.
The issues with the above statement include:
- They did not ask a question, they made a statement
- They are complaining instead of looking for help
- They left out all the details, what have they tried to do, have they tried? Any screenshots, error messages, etc.
- It is a bad question when it takes too long for us to go back and fourth and asking questions to answer the 9 talking points that should already have been answered to begin with.
Your Question Asking Template
Hey everyone, my name is {name} and I am trying to do the following {insert your situation here}. My goal or what I am trying to do is this: {insert your goals here}.
After doing {insert what you just tried to do} I got this error message: {insert your error text/screenshot here}. I have already tried to do the following based on the responses I could find online, {insert what you have tried here, Have you asked AI for help
or pasted your error code in there?}. I did however notice, when I {insert what you did} that the {piece of software or hardware name} does {insert what it does, like locks up, crashes, freezes, gives an error message}. Could you guys help point me in the right
direction with this issue? Maybe you guys have observed something similar before? I will also attach a diagram of my topology and how the devices/software are able to communicate with one another.