Getting Help the Correct Way from Mailing Lists

I often see on Apache Axis2/Java list and Apache Axis2/C list that users pop up questions like, "I used a client with a service and did not work. What might be the problem?". And you need about four or five follow up questions from other users or developers just to understand the question.

We can easily come up with an information set that should be provided with the original question:

1. What is the WSDL?

2. What was the exception?

3. What was the SOAP fault?

4. What was the request/response (captured with TCPMon)?

5. What did the log say?

I think it will be a good idea to instruct users to provide these information when submitting questions.

Rather than trying to fetch information out from users, we need to let them provide all info up front.

Comments

Senaka said…
Hi Samisa,

This is indeed a really helpful mechanism to identify what a user wants.

Makes things short n sweet.

Thanks,
Senaka