{"id":505,"date":"2012-03-19T14:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T14:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blogs\/paul\/post\/The-art-of-asking-email-questions-or-not.aspx"},"modified":"2012-03-19T14:28:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T14:28:00","slug":"the-art-of-asking-email-questions-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/the-art-of-asking-email-questions-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of asking email questions, or not&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">I love getting questions in email about SQL Server. I tell every class that they can send me questions and they&#39;ll get a response &#8211; sometimes just a URL to read, sometimes I engage for hours if it&#39;s a really interesting bug, for instance. It&#39;s a great way to help the community, it fosters&nbsp;good will for SQLskills.com (we&#39;re a business after all), and it provides me with some interesting real-life problems as source material for the various Q&amp;A columns I write. Everybody wins.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">However, I&#39;ve noticed a disturbing new trend &#8211; people sending questions which seem to demonstrate little or no thought, little or no research, and most irritating of all, little or no politeness. Please and thank-you cost nothing but seem to be sliding out of use during online communication. I mean, if you&#39;re going to ask someone for something for free, shouldn&#39;t you be polite about it and give them something reasonable to reply to?<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">This afternoon I got a doozy, and I thought I&#39;d share the anonymized conversation with you. I really didn&#39;t expect to be argued with in a response so I thought I&#39;d engage and argue back. No, this doesn&#39;t show me in a particularly good light &#8211; sometimes (rarely)&nbsp;my irritation overrides my self-restraint and I reply with some mild invective &#8211; but the end result was worth it as now I can help him out. If only he&#39;d started with the final email then none of this would have happened and you wouldn&#39;t be reading this.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font size=\"2\">Random email questions should roughly have, in my opinion:<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font size=\"2\">Greeting<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">Please<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">Problem statement(s) &#8211; but not 100s of lines of code with &quot;Incorrect syntax near &#39;,&#39;&quot;<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">Question(s)<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">Thanks<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\">And be relevant to things people know (or at least pretend) I know<\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Enjoy! And keep the good questions coming!<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font size=\"2\">Interested in your thoughts&#8230; was I right? was I wrong? I hum&#39;d and hah&#39;d about blogging this at all, but I thought you&#39;d find it interesting.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Original email:<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Paul. <\/p>\n<p>\tWhat is the best source to study for the MCTS and MCITP certs.? <\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">That&#39;s it. My reply:<\/font><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Seriously? No please, no thank you and you expect a response?<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Not the nicest, and certainly not the usual for this type of thing, but he was the straw that broke the camel&#39;s back today. His reply:<\/font><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Awesome!.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tYou&#39;ve just made my day Mr Randall. Really.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tI&#39;ve dreaded asking you questions in the past because I&#39;ve seen you rip people to shreds for silly questions.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tI thought, Paul seems like a straight forward guy and doesn&#39;t need any fluff. Plus, he&#39;s busy.&nbsp; I figured a short and direct question would be best. I spent about 5 minutes contemplating how to craft my email.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tEven if you don&#39;t respond, it was a great pleasure just to be shot down by you.&nbsp; My co-workers will get a kick out of it.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tPlease forgive me for wasting your time.&nbsp; I follow your work closely. It&#39;s made me a better DBA. I&#39;m an insider and a big fan.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tThank you for your time.<br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<br \/>\n\tTake care.&nbsp; <\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Interesting. I feel sort of like I&#39;m being blamed for this whole thread. Game on. My reply:<\/font><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Ok &#8211; you got my attention for 2 mins.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Yes, yours was a really silly question. And you were not polite about it &#8211; if you follow my blog you&#39;ll see me railing against people who don&#39;t say please or thank-you for random questions, which I usually answer regardless.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Did you do any research into answering your question? Google\/Bing? As you know, we don&#39;t teach any of these certifications, and I don&#39;t think much of them, nor do I have any of them, so it&#39;s unlikely that I&#39;ll know the best source for studying for them. You didn&#39;t even specify which one you were interested in.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">And best in terms of what? Cost? Depth? Breadth? Material? Teacher?<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Yes, I&#39;m very straightforward and very, very approachable &#8211; but I have no time for questions that really shouldn&#39;t be sent and occasionally when someone sends one with no politeness in, I respond as I did. You lucked in this week. Feel free to share this reply with your co-workers too.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Btw &#8211; my last name is Randal, not Randall. It&#39;s in my email signature.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Next time, ask a longer question, with more information, on a subject I&#39;m likely to know about, plus say please and\/or thank-you and you&#39;ll get a better response.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Thanks<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">His final reply, which is a bit over-the-top, but gutsy to reply again, so&nbsp;I&#39;m going to write a short, considerate response helping him out a bit:<\/font><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">Mr. Randal<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">When you get a free moment, would you please do me the honor of sharing some career advice.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">I&#39;m at the point in my career where I can no long consider myself a newbie. However, I&#39;m feel completely lost and direction less.<br \/>\n\tI want to be an excellent, well rounded DBA, but I don&#39;t know the best way forward. I&#39;m a very good Production DBA, but I feel I&#39;m rubbish when it comes to planning and architecting a database environment. I know little about Network, Storage, Virtualization etc. I also have little to no experience with the SSRS,AS,IS. I can really geek-out of SQL internals; and as I mentioned I really wont to know how to have an intelligent conversation about Network, Storage, etc. I only mention the BI tools because it&#39;s good to have them in your tool belt.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">If you were to mold a DBA, how would you do it? What sort of training? Is there an Immersion Event that fits? I&#39;ve attached my resume to give you an idea of my experience. [As if the great Paul Randal has time to read a resume. Worth a shot!]<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">I just need a little bit of direction. I&#39;m hungry, and I&#39;ve been aggressively trying to plug learn, but I want to make sure I&#39;m doing it the right way.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">Please help.<\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt\"><font size=\"2\">Thank you. <\/font><\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love getting questions in email about SQL Server. I tell every class that they can send me questions and they&#39;ll get a response &#8211; sometimes just a URL to read, sometimes I engage for hours if it&#39;s a really interesting bug, for instance. It&#39;s a great way to help the community, it fosters&nbsp;good will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The art of asking email questions, or not... - Paul S. 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