Guidelines For Creating Effective Posts

The key to getting good answers is doing your homework and then asking good questions.

Before you ask any questions you should have

• Read the FDS User's guide
• Read the FDS Technical guide
• Read the Smokeview User's guide (If it is a Smokeview question).
• Made sure your documentation and software are up to date
• Searched the Discussion Group and Issue Tracker for relevant keywords (has someone else already asked you question, reported your bug?).

When you ask a question,

• If you are reporting a bug then you should use the issue tracker not the FDS-Smokeview discussion group,
• Give some background that indicates what you have done to try and answer the question yourself,
• Use descriptive subject lines, like "The NFRAMES option not working" - not, "I need help"
• Reply to our replies and not new posts - It is hard to follow a thread if it is continually broken,
• Keep in mind the differences in time zones and please be patient. Users from all around the world participate in these forums and most of us need to sleep some time!
• Keep in mind that no one has the full time job of providing user support and there will be times when the developers are fully occupied with other tasks/projects.
• If you think a problem is a bug, then submit it to the Issue Tracker, along with a very simple demonstration of the problem in a short input file.
• If your problem is the documentation is unclear, be specific about what is unclear. A comment like "Chapter 12 makes no sense" doesn't help us improve the documentation, but whereas a comment like "The symbol X in Eq... is not defined" does.
• If the response you receive does not answer your question, it may be that what you were asking was not clear or was misinterpreted. Reply to the reply and rephrase your question and/or provide additional information. Asking the exact same question multiple times does not help but rather frustrates those trying to answer your question.
• If your question is about an input file you are trying to run, simplify it as much as possible before including as part of your post or as an attachment. It is much easier to provide assistance with 10 - 20 lines of input vs. 10,000 lines of input.

For guidelines on reporting FDS and/or Smokeview problems to the issue tracker see the Effective Issue Tracker Posting Wiki