Re: [SQL] Unanswered Questions WAS: An unresolved performance problem.

Randall Lucas <rlucas@tercent.net> writes:
> I suspect that a good number of fairly simple questions aren't being
> answered because they're either misdirected or because the poster
> hasn't included an "answerable" question (one with sufficient
> information to answer).

That's always been a problem, but it does seem to have been getting
worse lately.

> A suggestion to partially counter this, at least for "slow query" type
> questions, has been put forth.  If we make it a social norm on the
> pg-lists in general to reply off-list to inadequately descriptive "slow
> query" questions with a canned message of helpful guidance, we may be
> able to up the level of "answerability" of most questions.

The idea of some canned guidance doesn't seem bad, but I'm not sure if
it should be off-list or not.  If newbies are corrected off-list then
other newbies who might be lurking, or reading the archives, don't learn
any better and will make the same mistakes in their turn.

How about a standard answer of "you haven't really provided enough info
for us to be helpful, please see this-URL for some hints"?  That would
avoid bulking up the list archives with many copies, yet at the same
time the archives would provide evidence of the existence of hints...

> Thoughts?  Josh and I have placed a draft at
> http://techdocs.postgresql.org/guides/SlowQueryPostingGuidelines

Looks good, though I concur with Stephan's comment that the table
schemas aren't optional.

It might be worth including a checklist of the standard kinds of errors
(for example, datatype mismatch preventing index usage).  Come to think
of it, that starts to make it look like a FAQ list directed towards
performance issues.  Maybe we could make this a subsection of the main
FAQ?

            regards, tom lane