Asking for Help

tl;dr: we are busy people and short, to-the-point emails are much more likely to get answered

Quite often the Celluloid mailing list receives posts that look like the following:

I'm trying to use Celluloid in my application and I don't know where to start. I'll begin my email by rambling on and on about the minutia of my application. It's got lots and lots of stuff. I'm sure you're quite interested in every single little detail so let me tell you about it. It's got a hobber and a frobber and a bipper and a bopper and I'm trying to use Celluloid to let them communicate.

The hobber is probably the most important part. It constantly derp derps against a herp in order to get a herpderp so it can derpherp. This process takes place asynchronously and derps the herp every 3 fortnights because that's how often a herpderp is generated by the herp.

The hobber then passes the herpderp onto the frobber and duo an diceret scaevola adolescens, pri ignota sententiae an, nam wisi omittantur at. Pro ea albucius delectus, omnis delectus in sed. Accusam cotidieque id nec, ad mel dicunt iuvaret. Ius ex elit quas vitae, mei ex dicat postea expetendis. Ullum accommodare nam ea, esse timeam ne eam, mei ut iudicabit disputando.

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I hope you get the point. We'd like to answer these emails but they're enormous walls of use case-specific text which we simply don't have time to answer. If you look back over the history of the mailing list, you'll find several of these emails, all of which are unanswered.

Instead of sending emails like this, try breaking your problem down. Figure out the most confusing thing that you're stuck on, try to abstract your question away from implementation minutia, and ask specifically about that:

I have a hobber implemented as a Celluloid actor that derp derps against a herp every fortnight to get a herpderp, and I'd like to asynchronously communicate the herpderps to a separate actor that acts as a frobber. How do I ensure that the frobber receives all the herpderps from the hobber?

Short, succinct, to-the-point emails asking specific questions like this are much more likely to get answered than long, vague, rambling emails.