HowTo Get Help On The Message Board
From OpenFOAMWiki
... or the importance of precises posting
Questions on the message board are answered by volunteers. So
- you can't expect to get an answer to every question (sometimes no one knows the answer)
- but you can increase the probability to get an answer by using the following guidelines
And always remember: The difficult part about science is asking the right questions
- Give the person that should answer your question the feeling that you've invested at least as much time in it (formulation, previous research ...) as you expect her to invest in the answer
- As said above: people are answering in their spare time.
- Use the search-function of the message-board to see if somebody had this problem before
- Be precise. Try to include relevant information like
- OpenFOAM-version
- Used solver
- Problem description
- Relevant output
- Be brief. If you include output then clip it to the relevant parts (it is very unlikely that someone will answer a posting that includes 123 time-steps)
- Don't hijack threads. Just because people talk in a thread about the convergence of interFoam doesn't mean that this is the place to talk about correct boundary conditions for the gamma-field
- If you have the feeling that your problem is unique/new: start a new thread
- If you start a new thread give it a meaningful title (Threads like "Give me help", "I'm a newbie" are very unlikely to draw attention)
- Don't cross-post. Posting the same question (even with small variations) to various threads doesn't increase the likelihood of it being answered (on the contrary)
- Use english
- Be polite
- Use an identifiable name. There are people on the Message-Board (not me, but I understand them) who don't like answering to people with funny names ("Sword of Courant" is alright for some "World Of Warcraft"-forum but is not going to get you respect in this community. I know that the WoW-people won't understand it and it is therefor wasted on them, but that is why they play WoW)
Disclaimer: This is just a personal opinion and not the official policy of the Message-Board
