Doc: how to ask for help

I do like pancakes.

Author: KKalem

documentation/how_to_ask_for_help.md

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+# Help!
+
+Things break. Sometimes they never worked. Maybe it needed a special incantation to work that nobody told you. And now something doesn't work and your work is blocked, so you decide to ask for the help.
+
+## A common example
+Let's look at a made-up example between person A and C who need help with making a pancake and person B who used to be a chef:
+
+**A:** 
+> Hi! I was trying to make a pancake for breakfast, I got the mix, but it doesn't cook! Can you help?
+
+**B:** 
+> What kind of pancake, American, Swedish?
+> 
+> How did you make the mix?
+> 
+> How much of the mix did you put in the pan?
+> 
+> Did you use a pan or a pot?
+> 
+> Is the stove on?
+> 
+> What kind of stove is it? Electric? Induction? Fire?
+> 
+> Is your pan (if you used one) compatible with that kind of stove?
+> 
+> Did you make the mix yourself or did you buy it?
+> 
+> Is the stove plugged in?
+> 
+> Did you turn on the right stove? You could burn yourself if you turned on the wrong one...
+> 
+> You said it doesn't cook, but how does it look? Maybe it IS cooked, but you just don't know what a cooked pancake looks like?
+
+(and so on)
+
+Notice how many questions person B could come up with that WOULD explain the issue A is having. This tires B, takes 10 times longer than it should, and probably makes B annoyed since this is likely the 10th time they had to do this whole dance today.
+
+### How it could have been
+
+**C:** 
+> Hi! I was trying to make a **Swedish** pancake for breakfast, I **made** the mix **following this recipe**, but it **doesn't seem to change color**! **I put X amount of mix on a flat iron pan and turned on the stove and waited for Y minutes** Can you help?
+>
+> **<Attached picture of the mix, in the pan, on the stove>**
+
+**B:**
+> Ah, I see, your stove is not on, I could see from the pic that the lights on the front of the stove are all off despite the (correct) dial you turned. You probably didn't press the safety timer on the wall behind the stove.
+
+
+See how B could identify the issue right away, and it was something that A could not have known could even BE an issue in the first place. And this took 1/10th the time to reach a solution.
+
+Notice how C included the entire _story_ they lived, so that B didn't have to ask 100 questions to explore that same story. 
+
+#### But we don't make pancakes, we make robots?
+
+Then your pancake mix is a script, your recipe a tutorial, your expected change in color is a ros topic, your stove is the sim, the button you didn't know about is a script that needed to be running, your stove picture is your terminal output.
+
+## If you have been sent this document
+do not feel bad. Learning to ask for help effectively is not part of anybody's education. The sender is not mad, they are probably just tired of explaining this, so they hope this document would do that for them, and most likely expect you to come back with a request more like person C :)