Yeah, that's the easy part. Then, you get into if it's a hardware problem, a software problem? If so, which is it? Then, which applications are in use, which versions are in use, etc...
And that's just for straightforward questions. Many questions, probably a higher percentage than one might think initially, aren't so straightforward.
Go ahead, try it. Start with a flowchart on paper is my suggestion. I kinda tried it before, lemme see if I can find you the link...
Ah, there it is... It's from my original How To Ask A Good Support Question and was dropped from the revision that exists on the current site. The old site redirects to the current site's page, so it wasn't easy to retrieve this!
I gave up on the complex form idea and came up with this:
Fill out this form and, at the end of it, you can copy the text and use it as a starting position for asking for support. It is not conclusive, just a starting point. Note that I have it configured so
linuxtips.gq
Exactly zero people filled it out, but that was as basic as I could make it while still giving a functional output.
It's woefully inadequate for a more complex question, which so many of them are. We can tell they're complex by the number of answers proffered, the number of efforts made to solve the problem. If they were indeed straightforward, they'd get a straightforward answer.
That was my 'best effort' for the time I allowed myself. I initially envisioned something actually effective. Something where you'd fill in a form and then would be presented with another form due to the answers given. That'd be effective, but it's just an insane concept to write - which is probably why nobody smart has made one that I could steal!
