[rt-users] FAQ: Finding Answers About RT

Ruslan Zakirov ruslan.zakirov at gmail.com
Wed Mar 22 16:28:49 EST 2006 

:) Nice thing that people usually don't read :)
It should be shorter, a lot of philosophy water, people ignore such guides.


On 3/22/06, Jim Meyer <purp at acm.org> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I'm hoping this message will help RT users and admins find better
> answers more quickly by pointing out the resource at hand to help them
> and providing some guidance on how to ask questions that get answers. If
> this is well received, I'll post it regularly and invite suggestions for
> additions (and likely structure it more like a traditional FAQ).
>
>
> Finding Answers About RT
> -----------------------
> Becoming familiar with RT and the resources available to answer your
> questions can be difficult at first. Frequently you get no answers or
> very terse answers which don't seem to provide enough guidance. This can
> be frustrating; it can seem like no one wants to help you when quite
> often they do.
>
> First, do the legwork
> ---------------------
> There are a number of places to start your research before you post to
> the mailing list or send a note to someone who maintains some extension
> of RT. Here are a few searchable places, listed in order of likely
> usefulness:
>
>    http://wiki.bestpractical.com/         (the place lots of answers)
>    http://gossamer-threads.com/lists/rt/   (searchable list archives)
>    http://www.google.com/ (I generally start "+RT +MostUniqueErrMsg")
>
> Search there for answers to your questions. Very frequently you'll find
> just what you're looking for and perhaps more.
>
> Ask a good question well
> ------------------------
> Good questions are clear, concise, and demonstrate that you've done the
> legwork as mentioned above. They also show an presumption of ignorance
> on your part unless *you're absolutely certain you really understand
> exactly what's going on*. I've been working with RT for six years off-
> and-on and I still learn new things ... usually starting with an
> incorrect assumption on my part ;]
>
> A bit of an aside: nothing blows your credibility and diminishes
> interest in replying quite like an it's-all-screwed-up-and-must-be-a-bug
> message. RT is a large, complex, mature software system and you're
> probably not the first person to want to use feature X. It's very likely
> that there are many people using that feature and they'd be happy to
> help you join them
>
> Also, choose a descriptive subject; it's your first impression and will
> determine who reads your message. Get the good bits early in the subject
> (you don't know how many characters I'll see in my mailreader). Here are
> some good ones (chosen randomly from recent postings):
>
>    Can rt users come from LDAP?
>    Installing RT on Fedora Core 4
>    RT VMWare Appliance
>    Show stalled on AtAGlance list?
>
> Each of these gives clear guidance to the topic at hand. If it's a
> subject I might have unique knowledge on or a distinct interest in, I'll
> definitely make time to read it.
>
> Here are some horrible ones (chosen randomly from long ago to minimize
> embarassment):
>
>    RT questions
>    Lost information
>    Headings
>    Great Program!
>
> As you can see from these last, I have no chance to know what problems
> lie inside the email or whether I can provide uniquely useful
> information. On a slow day, I might read one of these to see if I can
> help. One a busy day, these go straight to the trash.
>
> Here's a decent framework to hang your question on:
>
>    Subject: FOO config problems while trying to BAR
>
>    I'm having problems properly configuring FOO. I thought I knew
>    how it worked, but my attempts have all failed and searching both
>    the wiki and the mailing list archives hasn't improved my
>    understanding enough to make it work.
>
>    I'm trying to use FOO to BAR [insert concise statement of purpose]
>
>    So far, I've tried to [insert concise summary of the saga]
>
>    I'm using RT [version] on [OS and version] with [all pertinent
>    web server details like apache version, mod_perl/fast_cgi, etc.]
>
>    Can anyone point me in the right direction?
>
> Finally, ask the right people. Generally, you should direct your
> questions to the rt-users mailing list as that's the right place for
> them (and nearly everyone on rt-devel is also on rt-users). Posting to
> rt-users allows you the benefit of experienced RT admin's knowledge,
> which will likely solve your problem much more quickly than any other
> approach.
>
> The rt-devel list is for development issues such as "I'm thinking of
> implementing thus-and-such and wonder how I should go about it" or "I
> found a bug and fixed it; here's a patch" and the like.
>
> While it's often tempting to think you've got a bug or critical issue
> and should immediately send it to rt-devel, most of the time it's not a
> bug but a misconfiguration on your part which results in a terse note
> pointing this out and directing you to do the legwork (as mentioned
> above).
>
> This may seem callous, but consider this: anyone with an
> bestpractical.com email address is trying to make a living working on
> RT; the rest of us have a full-time day job and voluntarily contribute
> to RT as we can. None of us wants to give up precious development time
> in order to do your initial legwork; conversely, we're happy to help
> once you've done it and still have questions.
>
> Note that there's an extensive treatise on the art of asking good
> questions well at http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>
> Give A Little Bit
> -----------------
> If you've come up with the answer to a sticky problem, consider giving
> back to the community either by summarizing to the mailing list or into
> the wiki. That'll help the next generation of new RT admins ... and save
> you answering their questions on the list over and over again. ;]
>
> Cheers!
>
> --j
> --
> Jim Meyer, Geek at Large                                    purp at acm.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://lists.bestpractical.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rt-users
>
> Community help: http://wiki.bestpractical.com
> Commercial support: sales at bestpractical.com
>
>
> Discover RT's hidden secrets with RT Essentials from O'Reilly Media.
> Buy a copy at http://rtbook.bestpractical.com
>
>
> We're hiring! Come hack Perl for Best Practical: http://bestpractical.com/about/jobs.html
>


--
Best regards, Ruslan.

More information about the rt-users mailing list