This page's shorter URL is http://tinyurl.com./2ddvq.

Please follow the standard litany when giving a problem report.

You've come to this page because you've reported a problem, for which you want a diagnosis and a remedy, but have not answered one or more of the questions in the standard litany.

This is the Frequently Given Answer to such reports.

Any problem report must provide

This applies to problem reporting in any field. It is just as true when one is reporting problems in a technical discussion forum, such as a Usenet newsgroup, as it is when one is describing a illness to one's doctor or a problem with one's car to one's car mechanic.

Providing this information with respect to problems with using tools or machines is done by a standard litany of questions and their answers that you must provide. The questions are:

A problem report that doesn't answer all of these questions is incomplete, and contains insufficient information for diagnosis and prescription of a remedy. If you don't supply this information right at the start, you'll waste yours and others' time, and delay the actual remedy to your problem, by forcing everyone to spend one or more rounds of communication back and forth simply trying to wring the relevant information out of you.

The questions in the standard litany can be paraphrased when it comes to the use of computers:

Note the words "actual", "exact", "complete", and "precisely". Problem reports that are vague or superficial are worthless. ("I'm ill, doctor. Help!")

Also note that problem reports that you deliberately distort will yield an incorrect diagnosis and very probably an ineffective remedy.


© Copyright 2003–2004 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard. "Moral" rights asserted.
Permission is hereby granted to copy and to distribute this web page in its original, unmodified form as long as its last modification datestamp is preserved.