The Craft of Answering
WordPress Questions
Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko
- WPSE ( s.tk/wp )
- family’s tech slave
In the past
- support infrastructure lead
- “anykeyer”
not for sale
Taught me research & programming
- Ultima Online
- Answering questions
Formal education never clicked.
Answering illuminates topic
- breadth ( you are doing what? )
- depth ( look at what it can do! )
- trends ( enough of that, go away. )
scale
Things important for scale
Or your sanity won’t last.
Question comprehension
- I did…
- I expected…
- I got…
kinds of answers
Nudge
- short
- precise
- for pros
- never just a link
Code
- impressive
- hard to read
- eager to go viral ( worst of it is )
- result divided by effort
Answer
- correction ( do / expect / get )
- educated guess
- well–referenced
Legend
- major experience ( 1–2 years )
- major effort ( 4–6 hours )
- whatever it takes
“it’s really good”
streamline
Boilerplate
Sometimes I start to type “what the f∗∗∗?” and it comes out “could you please elaborate?”.
Hotkeys
- mouse is slow
- find the hot spots
- as much as makes sense
md-link.js
javascript:(function () {
var selection = window.getSelection().toString();
var anchor = selection ? selection : document.title;
void(prompt('', '['+anchor+']('+location.href+')'));
})();
gist.github.com/5700850
but
environment
People
Step away when not your
- depth
- patience
- happy place
Supply of questions
- hard are for discovery
- easy are for mastery
- both are necessary
understanding