Everyone wants their questions answered. Unfortunately, the answers you get might not be what you wanted. Asking intelligent questions is key to structuring a useful information exchange, collecting information for trouble-shooting problems, and treating those that offer their help with courtesy and respect. Socrates developed the baseline method for that thousands of years ago, yet it's just as effective (and underutilized) today - as demonstrated by use of the Socratic Oath in teaching elementary kids binary arithmetic.

Here's some suggestions for how to get to where you want to go quickly, efficiently, and with the best chance of getting the help you need:

• At the most basic level, an article on Impressing your teacher with good questions offers some basic ideas.
• An article on Qualities of a Good Question provides guidance for those designing survey instruments.
• There is an article on Getting Answers that strives to increase your probability of getting the answers you want by improving how you ask questions up front.
• There is also a classic by Eric Raymond on Asking Questions the Smart Way that many find useful, but some find arrogant.
• Google has retired Google Answers, but Yahoo Answers is still active. Interestingly, neither provided much guidance on how to ask good questions.

The third and fourth bullet above have a distinctly software flavor, but could be evolved into a more generic and practical guidance, with some work. That's a task for another day!