How to Get Help From a Hacker

I love language, and especially precise and correct language. So I enjoyed a recently disovered article first published by Eric Steven Raymond in 2001 called How to Ask Questions the Smart Way:
He writes:

"In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer."

"Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework"

"Describe the goal, not the step"

"Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses"

And my favorite:

"Prune pointless queries.

Resist the temptation to close your request for help with semantically-null questions like 'Can anyone help me?' or 'Is there an answer?' First: if you've written your problem description halfway competently, such tacked-on questions are at best superfluous. Second: because they are superfluous, hackers find them annoying — and are likely to return logically impeccable but dismissive answers like 'Yes, you can be helped' and 'No, there is no help for you.'

In general, asking yes-or-no questions is a good thing to avoid unless you want a yes-or-no answer."