How to ask a good question / Help Us Help You

Tutorials & Examples
52

I agree. I think the OH forum is unique even among open source projects in the quality and timeliness of the help it provides. But I think my point is we can’t promise to keep it up. Power users of the forum come and go and there isn’t always someone to pick up the slack. A lot of questions that are poorly worded or do not provide enough information or are just really specific never get answered at all. If we were a help desk, paid or unpaid, I don’t think we could get away with that. I certainly would expect a help desk to freely ignore “trouble tickets” for any reason.

I’m certain this is mostly an argument over semantics. And if you want to call exactly what we have now a help desk, by all means. I wouldn’t and I don’t know that many would.

However, if you want to turn the forum into something more like a help desk, I cannot say I’m for it. I think it might demotivate some of the contributors and actually hurt our progress. And it will increase the frustration of the end users having a place to submit trouble tickets but never get a response.

I totally agree with this. I cringe at the way others and sometimes even myself have answered a question. Or should I say failed to answer a question .

Were I king for a day I’d decree that all poorly worded or poorly asked questions be left unanswered at all and we could have a bot come along and say something like:

Hello, this is the forum bot.

It looks like you asked a question that did not receive any responses. There are a lot of reasons this could be the case. Please see (link to above posting) and see if any of that advice applies to your question. If not, it might be something no one currently on the forum knows how to answer.

Then we as users don’t need to leave our terse little responses and can go freely about our day and maybe some of this attitude will dissipate. But I’m not king and I don’t know if such a thing is feasible or possible or if anyone else thinks its a good idea.

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53

For my small contribution I’m content with a simple like.:hearts:,:grinning:

I think it’s a great idea.:+1: You certainly have my vote for KING.:grinning:

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54

I second this one.

I know some users find it easier to just jump into a community and ask, rather than to try read the docs or do some effort getting into this stuff…
But others users are struggling trying to even understand, (I have been there, and still is). They may not even know how to answer those questions on the #10 of the first post. They´re probably highly frustrated when they enter the community. I do feel sorry for those, (because I have been there). And I feel even more sorry, when I see some of the reactions from the community on their request for help.

Openhab isnt just one single and easy peace of software. Openhab is alot of highly difficult things. Linux running behind is a total no-go for many people out there. openhab is filled with bindings which doesnt apply for commercial status. It´s open sources which means, there is actually no quantee. Anything can (and probably will) go wrong, doc´s mostly isn´t written for new users. And specially not users who dont have any knowledge in computer stuff in general.

All this makes openhab very difficult, in general. Running into problems with something which is very difficult, does NOT make things any better. (I know this from my own situation atm, struggling with some fatal problems, I cant seem to find any solution for).

I understand how frustrated it can be to see the same question asked again and again… But insted of beeing focused on correcting the users asking, a better solution could be to focus on, WHY so many ask the same question… What can be changed to avoid all these questions over and over again… Somewhere something is wrong and probably could be optimized. This is were focus should be.

A small example.
Each time I look for the latest release of an snapshot binding, I´ll have to search the forum and scroll through several messages, (maybe even several threads too) hoping to find a link… And I honestly wonder, why is it like this… Why isn´t there an easier way to find whats typically is beeing asked for? If I should help myself here, I would bookmark each message with the link to a binding… But when the developer then update and make a new version, my link is useless.

If I was a new user and searching for a binding (snapshot) I would probably end up asking insted of using hours trying to search for it. In this case, it´s not the users doing anything wrong, in my opinion… It´s the structure of the way things are handled on this community. And I do believe it could become more, ‘user-friendly’ , insted of just pointing at the users, telling them to go search the community and trying to filter does zillions of answers from eachother… It just isn´t always the best solution.

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55

If you are using a development snapshot of a binding then you are signing yourself up to be an alpha tester or even sometimes a development tester. You really should be pretty highly knowledgeable with both the technology and the binding to use a developer snapshot. And if you are such a person, you probably already know where to look. If you are not such a person, you probably shouldn’t be using that version of the binding. If you are a new user you DEFINITELY shouldn’t be using a developer snapshot of a binding.

If you are a moderately experienced user, you should be using everything at the same version. So either this user should upgrade their entire oh to the latest milestone or snapshot version.

It should be rare in the extreme that ANY users upgrade just one add on to a different version from their base OH version. Inexperienced and new users should do so only with the help of an experienced user.

Therefore, IMHO it should be hard to find the jar files to upgrade just one binding for new users.

I agree with most of the rest of your post but not with your example because that isn’t something that is part of of normal operating procedures and should only rarely be done. We should not go out of our way to make this easy.

And for the record, the latest successful snapshot built jar files can be downloaded from https://ci.openhab.org/

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That does not hit the point well. There’s not many specific questions to re-occur again and again (as a long term supporter I think I have quite a good overview which entitles me to claim that).
Most truely re-occuring questions in turn violate in fact multiple conditions we’ve raised in our manifest (post #1 of this thread). They’re just too open (i.e. not specific), incomprehensible at times and almost always clearly show that the poster has not put in the amount of time and effort into searching and reading docs himself that we expect him to put in before we feel it’s worth and fair spending our time to answer it (if possible at all).
Now ask yourself why that sometimes results in replies to contain a negative tone. That’s not intentional, we apologize and correct ourselves when we notice, but even without that’s still better than to ignore the post, no ?

As Rich already commented on, your snapshot example doesn’t really apply. Yes even us, those power users this applies to, would like to have more information from the developers. But it’s often just not there for a number of reasons, often because it’s used in specific environments where it just works but these are unknown to us so we cannot work out the difference to a user’s environment who has problems.
I’m not saying things cannot be improved. Note it’s essentially different people (with little overlap only) to
a) do the core development, b) do the documentation and c) do the support here on the forum.
All of these people are heavily resource-constrained and don’t have the full set of capabilities to do a) - c).
On c), we tried streamlining things by creating the manifest. While of course it would be a desireable solution, we cannot afford spending the amount of time it takes to individually teach OH to any beginner. The fact remains that beginners must bring their share of effort and willingness to try things for themselves. The manifest explains what we expect them to bring, and if they do, noone of us will refrain from trying to help as much as we can.

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57

Please read Chris Jackson’s first answer in the topic " Z-Wave devices remain unknown after update.
The users look to me to be ordinary OH users.
By the way thanks for the link.

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Well… as a developer I’m heavily promoting the use the snapshot version of the binding, because I want to know if works and doesn’t contain any bugs. For new bindings there is no stable version so if a user wants to use something it’s a snapshot version. Just look at the list of new bindings in the last release. There were only snapshots versions of those new bindings. So in praktisch it’s not going to work to not use snapshot versions. Even for existing bindings there are issues. For example if a device manufacturer decided to update the firmware of a device resulting in a binding not working. If the developer fixes this quickly it will only be available in a snapshot version. So the users only option is to install the snapshot. And not to mention that small sentence added to that updated binding: to use this binding you need to upgrade to the snapshot version of openHAB… (Because some interfacing in openHAB changed and this updated binding depends on it).

So I can relate to the problem of finding the right version. Most of the time, especially for new bindings, the developer posts a link to the forum. Then people react, some things change and an updated version is created by he developer. Next the developer posts an update with a new/same link again. If this happens over a longer period these links become outdated. Or bindings get merged, new released come making even more links obsolete. Searching through all that information can be hard for new users I would guess.

There are ways to distribute a snapshot binding: Via the Eclipse Marketplace. I try to use the Eclipse Marketplace as much as possible to distribute snapshot versions. But I think I’m only one of the few who do this. It’s maybe not the most elegant interface. But at least it makes it easier for users. So developers can help here too.

However I think openHAB needs it’s own integrated distribution mechanism for snapshot/new bindings that makes it easier for both developers and users. I’ve been thinking about such a system, but have no clear solution yet. So we can all beter communicatie what the status of a binding is and were to find it and if it is going to work on the system one is currently running on.

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Would you want a new user who barely knows the difference between a Thing and an Item beta testing your binding? That seems like a recipe for frustration on everyone’s part. How would these users be able to even know whether the problem is their own or because they discovered a bug? How many just give up at that point? How much time do you need to spend hand holding the new users to help discover for yourself where the problem might lie?

Just to be clear, I’m talking about new users. Anyone who is over that initial hump of learning the basics of OH and has a somewhat working system already will be in a much better position to actually help you test your binding instead of becoming a time sink as you have to play 20 questions with them and help them gather the information you need.

And I’m not saying that users shouldn’t use the snapshots. I am saying that a new user would be far better off working with everything at the same version over running a snapshot version of a binding on an older version of the core.

I’m arguing that a new user shouldn’t be downloading a jar file from some random thread on the forum to alpha test a developer’s new binding. They have enough to learn to use OH successfully without having to deal with discovering, identifying, and reporting bugs in a binding undergoing test.

:clap: Thank you. I personally think the IOT Marketplace is a vastly underutilized resource for this sort of thing. Is wish all binding developers used it instead of using direct links to jar files in forum postings.

I’m intrigued by the idea.

60

I dont agree.

Openhab is very much about using snapshots… Without, there will be ½ year before release, and things is beeing fixed, new features are added in the mean time.
I know it´s riscky using snapshots, but both the users and developers need it this way. And in my opinion, snapshots are part of the open source gameplay. Things are developed very fast (if it´s an active developer). And no user wish to sit and wait ½ year for an update, only to discover its has changed drastics, (like the mqtt binding) leaving the user spending hours/days trying to fix it.
Then the user would be better off, following the development and try stuff.

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Both can and will benefit on this one, Rich…
Ofcouse the users (new user) need some help… But in my opinion, then best help one can get, it working together.

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My old mother used to say - If you cant think of any positive to mention, dont mention anything!

I know you apologize. You´re grown-ups… And I do know and understand your frustration as well… But I would rather want you to try help yourself, simply by focusing on whats important… If you feel a new users is taking up your time, then leave him. Others might have enough spare time to help. And if not, this user is beeing forced to try himself. It´s not the same as ignoring a post… It´s prioriting.

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63

Perhaps not, but maybe they an wait a month or two using a version of OH that isn’t constantly changing out from under them and which has no known bugs or the bugs that are there are known and already documented. OH is hard enough to learn to use by itself. Why make it harder by chasing after a moving target.

And I’m not saying that no user should use snapshots. I’m not saying that even moderately experienced users shouldn’t use snapshots. But I cannot recommend a new user (let’s say a user with less than 40 hours of working with OH) should use snapshots. They should at most use a milestone build. And this type of user should NOT be downloading jar files from random forum postings and trying to make it work. Learn the basics first.

OH is so hard to learn and gets started with I cannot recommend anything that makes it even more difficult.

But forum users like me and vincent and dim and the others are here to help new users with new user problems. A developer shouldn’t be wasting their time helping a new user figure out basic OH concepts and configurations that have nothing to do with their binding.

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64

Agree… But I feel you misunderstand the situation… There are bindings in the release which doesn´t work or is highly limited. (Remember I previously mentioned z-wave or even Zigbee?).
There are bindings which hasn´t been added to the release versions. If the user need this, then it has to be the hard way.
Ofcouse, you can always state, you dont want to spend your time on a user who havn´t got enough knowledge or doesnt show the effort you think he/she should… And thats fine by me. But it doesn´t provide any usefull help, telling the user to wait for the release. It´s not just a question of a few months… It could be as far as ½ year, maybe more, if the binding doesnt make it to the release. Hopefully this user would have learn in the mean time.

Also I think you miss the benefit, that every time a user get help, this user can provide the same help to the next user… etc.

The developer has to, (if none else does, including the users) if he wants someone to test his development. Ofcouse he can benefit from experienced users, and their help to others that including new users, exactly like I just wrote above. This is happning all the time, and most people seem to be satisified with it.

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65

I once spent about 40 man hours helping this one user who refused to help himself. “This stuff is so complicated how am I supposed to do this, I’m no IT man.” But he sure did want what he wanted and he wanted it right now and he got very angry when I gave up and refused to help him any more. That may have colored my opinion some but “I want it right now and I don’t care how much time it takes you to help me get what I want.” is never going to be a convincing argument.

And nowhere am I saying anyone has to wait for the next release. One only needs to wait at most a month for the milestones.

The only reasons one needed to try out the development version of the zwave binding was because they either wanted to manually create Things in .things files or they wanted to integrate locks. There is plenty to do when starting with OH to get started over a month of learning. The only reason not to wait is because “I want it now.”

I don’t miss this point. But I think you miss the point that encouraging new users to do things that will make their learning process and adoption of OH even harder than it is is not going to lead to success most of the time.

You missed the first part.

But forum users like me and vincent and dim and the others are here to help new users with new user problems.

Creating a thread with several hundred posts that is supposed to be about beta testing a developer’s new binding before it makes it into the nightly snapshots is not helped in the least by a bunch of posts dealing with new user problems doesn’t help anyone. I’m not saying that developers shouldn’t help new users. I’m not saying developer shouldn’t help all users. But when a new user who doesn’t know the first thing about OH yet bumbles in and tries to do advanced stuff like installing a binding manually from a downloaded jar file because “they want it now” shows either a lack of understand of how much time that imposes on us or they value our time so little as to not care.

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66

I think in this whole discussion, there is a mix up between first time user and new user of a certain binding.

I’m with @rlkoshak OH is already hard enough to have first time users bother by bugs and testing.

It will frustrate the developer and the first time user.
Now once a new binding is more stable then a first time user can use it and then his feedback will make it better.
this new users by then will better understand OH and the binding will be working in the normal cases and most corner cases.

Milestones or some similar versions would do that trick.

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67

That’s plain wrong and shows an unreasonable expectation attitude that cannot be met.
Zigbee is experimental and no user really NEEDS it (there’s still Hue, Tadfri etc if one owns that HW).
ZWave was working fine before the development version (now part of 2.4), too, with only a few smallish limitations (remember device database was the same).

What you call “needs” is actually just expectations of users, new ones in particular, and it’s expectations that are exceeding what can reasonably be accomplished. They expect all of their devices to instantly work the way they want although they’re not even halfway familiar with the technology and unaware that it’s an exotic, complex, brand new or even wrong thing they expect. Reasonable, well-informed people (such as moderate-term OH users) with more of a common sense would NOT expect that to be available.

By no means.
Someone new to his development, yes (but that applies to everybody). Some OH newbie - definitely no.

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68

Wrong!
Zigbee is official release, even in openhab 2.3 and I do believe in openhab 2.2 as well.
Lot of things has changed, and several problems seem solved, in snapshot binding 2.5. Before this, Zigbee was a true hell. (I have been there all the way since 2.2!).
Second - who are you to decide, if someone needs Zigbee? Either I misunderstand your argument, or you seem rather arrogant to me.

Z-wave does not contain all devices… When someone has a device which is not yet supported by the z-wave database. Either this user has to add it himself, or wait for someone to do that, and then pull the latest binding.

Why?
If I install a peace of software which claim to support something. No surprise I DO EXPECT it will support it, ofcouse. Why shouldn´t I?

It has nothing to do with common sense. (Beside understanding the concept of open source in general!)
It has to do with the information, the “picture” openhab sends when reading about it etc… This is where the expectation arrives. And when things dont seem to work, questions will apear, no matter how experience the user is. It´s the concept of open source projects in general!

In my opinion, you´re wrong. But I understand we´ll never agree on this.
Open source projects needs all kinds of users. And specially a software like openhab, which involves thousands of things, devices and stuff. Those experienced user cant cover everything, and specially not documentation. If you focus only on this kind of experienced user, it will turn into a “closed family”. A “closed family” which often havnt got room for new users, unless they show an enormous effort and become experienced as well. This is not uncommon in several open source projects I have been familiar with.
But to my understanding, this is not the idea with openhab2. I could be wrong though. I must admit, reading your replies, I believe I´m wrong.

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69

So what ? Can you expect any software to provide that ? No you cannot.
Did anyone promise OH does ? No. It’s just (wrong) expectations.

Not wrong. We can have an argument over meaning of words if that’s experimental, beta, v1 or whatever you prefer, but clearly the Zigbee binding is not comprehensive, mature code.
The fact that is was contained in some release does not mean anything by itself. Just one counter example, the Experimental Rules Engine also has been part of OH releases for some time, still it’s called like that - guess why.

I think you misunderstand. I mentioned those other bindings because you can use them if you want to integrate Zigbee devices without using the Zigbee binding. But noone needs to integrate them and noone needs to use the Zigbee binding for that.
No life depends on it, and it’s not commonly available (thus “expectable”) functionality either. OH is an unmatched over-the-top integration system. There cannot be a “need” to provide OH’s functionality because
a) those Zigbee systems already work self-contained (e.g. use Hue app or remote with their bulbs) and
b) no other umbrella system - to be compared with/potentially replaced by OH - provides functionality like that.
So it’s a user’s hope or wish at best, or expectation as I called it, but nowhere near a need or even promise.
The difference between wish and expectation is the user’s perception of whether this is supposed to work with the software he’s using. That in turn depends on many things, OH’s docs being one of them, but as with all systems, caution needs to be applied when reading statements (or lack thereof), especially when it comes to new features. That’s part of applying “common sense”.
As unfortunate as that may be it’s the way the modern world is that descriptions are mostly formulated the positive way but often omit pieces that would be important to some reader. Docs are never comprehensive - let alone early versions - and to expect them to be is naive. Changing docs to be full of warnings makes people stay away from it so that’s no proper approach either. This is nothing specific to Open Source.
And it’s way more than the official docs to contribute to that perception. Official docs are usually late and scarce on new features so often it’s some inofficial information source (someone’s posting on the forum maybe) that may as well just be wrong or misunderstood.
There’s much room for a user to misinterpret things, let alone a newbie - and MOST are newbies here because it’s a NEW feature.

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Just as well as you would expect anything else to work…
So what you say is, users should not expect anything to work? (this is the terms of open source, like I said in my first post).

Regarding wether new users shouln´t be installing snapshot bindings… It sure does mean everything…

I doubt anyone would find openhab2 interesting because of the Expermental Rules Engine. Opposite goes for Zigbee, Z-wave and other devices… This is what draws interest.

How are you suppose to use Zigbee devices without the binding?

Ehh!! No life depends on anything regarding openhab… Whats your point here?

You can buy lots and lots of zigbee devices without a gateway… I really fail to understand what you´re getting at here… Not all Zigbee devices are Philips Hue, Traadfri, Osram Ligthify devices… Just for your information!

Expectations I agree. Because someone/somthing told the users to expect something.

This thread is about how knowledged, how experienced and how much effort a new user should comprehend, before beeing allowed to post questions or ask for help.
Min opinion is, openhab is open source, and it´s highly difficult. This means, you can not stop these questions or asking for help. And you can not demand these new users to go study and not come back untill they can develope themselves. What you can do, is to decide for yourself, how much time and effort you want to put in these new users, and partly demand a minimal effort, (which I cant define).
Thats open source!

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71

It’s not about not being allowed. Everyone is allowed to ask a question. BUT a question should be asked with the relevant information around it AND (preferably) that the user has tried to solve the problem by him(her)self before asking.
That is not too much to ask.

Yes, openHAB is hard.
Yes, it’s a steep learning curve, even for exprienced IT people.

Home automation in general is HARD. The house is not magically going to start using 40 devices from 10 different suppliers talking 5 different protocols to open the blinds in the morning or set your ventilation and heating. Not to mention the lights. It takes hard work and dedication.
Home automation is a Hobby. That means spending time (A lot of time) to make it work.

In 10 years time, with AI, it may be possible to have plug and play home automation.
In the mean time, sit down in front of your screen, read the docs and learn. There is no other way.

We (The power users) have spent a lot of time and dedication to learn this. Often when there was no forum to speak of yet. We sat down, and tinkered until it worked.
No one spoon fed us ready made code and/or binding configs.

Openhab 1, was way harder that OH2 is now, and it is getting better and better. The Devs are doing a sterling job.
The users powering the forum are doing a great job.
The new users are only asked to help themselves a little bit.

The OP

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