Just want to preface this by saying I understand and agree with the importance of including a MWE, but I am curious about the best information to supplement a question with when a MWE would only contain the class document environment initialization.
I am getting ready to prepare a few investigative questions where I have a route in mind, but it's truly hacking my way through a package that I have gotten to know reasonably well, but it's probable there may be a more efficient alternative already. Unfortunately these preexisting alternatives can be difficult to find because they weren't developed for this particular context and keywords won't match up with accurate results. Given that the TeX community is one of the best you'll find anywhere, theres a good chance I could benefit from someone else's experience.
I see plenty of really short questions asking "is this possible", "how can I do this", and "what package do will do this?". But would like to know how I can (in general):
- improve (broaden) the question (if necessary) so that it's helpful to many.
- maximize my chances of a user recognizing my 'obscure' request because of an alternate or general procedure.
- avoid appearing like a parasite asking "please do this for me" - so far from my experience I don't think my long questions are helpful as I try and propose my considered approaches and/or providing a complete review of my possibilities but I am torn between proving I have put in an effort or keeping the question brief.
- Provide adequate information to satisfy the site's policies in the absence of a MWE.
%<--- Here is a magical macro that defines this....
and then faking its function with hardcoded values etc. Then people can fill it in without ambiguity. – percusse May 22 '15 at 2:54