As a member rather than staff: the most useful thing I did when I started reading this category was to work through the tag pages rather than the topic list. The topic list shows you what is recent. The tags show you what is settled.
9 likes 10mo
Topic summary
About the How to Ask category
This is a generated summary. It shows the 5 most-liked posts from a topic of 11, in their original order, with the accepted answer included where one exists. It is a reading aid and it will miss nuance — the full topic is the record.
Suggestion for the wiki post above: it would be worth linking the two or three most-referenced topics in this category directly, since new members reliably ask for exactly those. Happy to make the edit myself if nobody objects, with a revision note.
21 likes 9mo
br.wikstrom, post #6: Coming back to post #4, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer. The specific question in the title is more useful than you might think. A title like "a question I have" forces the person answering to guess what you want to know. A title with the actual question gets you an answer in two hours instead of two days. Go to post
Questions you cannot explain: "I cannot say why I am asking this, but is this compound stable at room temperature?" is more productive than no question at all. People here know that some questions cannot be asked in public and they will work with that constraint.
Arithmetic questions: write out the steps. "I have a 10 mg vial, I added 2 mL, I want a 0.25 mg dose, and I get this number for the syringe mark" is answerable. "How many units" is not.
9 likes 5mo
c.ostergaard, post #3: As a member rather than staff: the most useful thing I did when I started reading this category was to work through the tag pages rather than the topic list. The topic list shows you what is recent. The tags show you what is settled. Go to post
Five questions in one post gets you one answer: the easiest one, usually not the one you needed most. Post them separately or pick the one that depends on the others least and ask that one first.
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