Re: How to ask a question?
Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> wrote:
> More explicitly:
> How should I [who has *ability* to hyperfocus mitigated by
> distractibility {cf ADHD}] ask questions in this particular forum?
>
> Why do I ask?
> In my read with PDF related questions, my responses were essentially
> "Why are you trying to do?" rather than an answer to to a narrowly
> focused question.
>
> A correct, but skew answer, could have been "to gain dietary
> information to lower probability of another heart attack".
> Nutritionists had given me answers that more a set of intermediary
> goals than actual things I could apply to daily life.
>
> I had discovered a USDA document[1] that came close to being useful
> and was trying to think of a presentation format that would meet
> multiple goals. I hadn't yet determined that format, thus could not
> answer questions being asked.
>
> In the meantime [GRIN]
> I have discovered the source documents[2][3] used in preparing the
> above. Now I have to relearn how to extract specific content from
> spreadsheets. Something I haven't done in close to two decades.
>
> But *THE* question remains.
> How to ask narrowly focused questions which will get answers in this
> forum?
In the case of my response, the specific precise question you asked was:
"How/where do I find interpretation of those?"
(referring to some error messages from a poppler tool)
A little googling on my part told me the answer to that question was
unlikely to be helpful to you (and too much bother for me to actually
bottom out!) so I made some alternative suggestions. Nobody, including
you, responded to my post, so I reverted to being an observer.
i.e. you chose the wrong precise question to ask, and should instead
have chosen a more broadly based question about your actual problem,
not one particular detail of a solution you had prematurely chosen.
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