How to get help. (Please read this first!)

Discussion in 'Plugin Development' started by soulofw0lf, Jul 13, 2013.

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    soulofw0lf

    Here are some guidelines on how to get help with your plugin issues quicker.

    Before Posting!
    Please make sure to search the forums for your answers first! There are a ton of answers already out there for questions we see all the time!

    also... http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/ho...ubleshoot-your-own-plugins-by-yourself.32457/ -- best self trouble shooting post out there!



    1: Specifics

    Help i'm having trouble with x part of my plugin:
    Just stating something like this doesn't really give anyone any idea as to what the problem is. In order to help you we need to be able to see what the problem is.

    Don't just post a couple lines of code and say NPE:
    While in some situations we may be able to look at just a couple tiny lines of code and see what your problem is it's not going to happen very often, you'd save everyone alot of time and effort if you would just post the full method you're having trouble with, including error message (specifically what type of error and Caused by: plus the next couple lines.) and show us what specific line in your code is the one referenced by the error.

    Give examples:
    Don't just say things like "I've tried everything~!" Show us what you've tried, tell us what the results were. You are far more likely to get help if people see that you have taken steps to try and do it on your own first! 90% of questions asked here are usually correctly answered by telling people to reference the javadocs.

    What are you trying to do:
    Along with knowing what the error is, in order for people to fully help you they will need to understand what you are trying to accomplish. We aren't looking for something like "I'm making a HG plugin" we're looking for things like "In this part of my HG plugin i am attempting to set a players health to 5 if they touch a dragons egg" By letting us know what your code is trying to achieve we can better help you fix your code, or even give you better suggestions on how to achieve your goal for that part of your plugin.


    2: What to expect:


    Don't expect others to write your code:
    A lot of users on these forums want to help people understand coding better. We want to help you grow as a programmer, and we want to help integrate you into the Dev community that we have here. What we don't want to do is have people post in the plugin dev forums with a code request. If you want someone to completely write a code for you please go to the plugin requests section. Coming on here and asking people to show you code, or write you code to make X thing work in your plugin will not be received well.

    Don't be in a rush:
    People here are part of a dev community. We are not paid staff. Most of us don't even do this professionally in any capacity at all. We are a community of people that are voluntarily spending our time reading this section of the forum to offer advice and guidance. Almost every person you talk to on these forums has a life of some sort outside of the internet and will have obligations and responsibilities they have to attend to. Just because someone doesn't respond right away doesn't mean no one wants to help you. Also as a rule of thumb DO NOT bump your own thread within the first 24 hours it's up. Those of us that read these forums and offer assistance aren't so lazy that we can't look past the first page of a forum, so don't think you're post will be swept away and never seen. all your doing by bumping your post so soon after creating it is showing us that you are impatient, arrogant enough to think your post is the most important, and rude enough to be pushy. 3 traits that will make almost no one want to help you, so slow down, don't be in a rush, and you'll get helped eventually!

    3: How to ask:


    Basic format for asking questions:

    One thing that will making handling peoples issues alot easier is if everyone starts using a basic guideline in their posts with how to put relevent information. here is a suggestion for a way to format your threads

    Type of issue: (NPE onEnable)(Can't find how to do X in the javadocs)(Other error)

    What you are trying to accomplish: Be decriptive, let us know exactly what your code should be doing

    What EXACTLY is happening instead: Also be descriptive if possible if it's not just a load error let us know what steps you took to produce your error.

    Error Code:

    Code:
     //if you have an error code place it in code blocks 


    Releveant code Lines:

    Code:
    //place releveant code lines in code blocks as well, preferably with java syntax


    What part of that code is your error pointing to: Which line of code is it that the error is stating.


    4: After a response:

    I've gotten a response!! what now?
    After someone has taken the time to respond to you be polite. Don't argue with them, or insult them, or anything else that is going to make other dev's look at it and decide you aren't worth the time.

    Mark your post as solved!
    We all love helping people out but we hate seeing a post that has been solved not marked as such cause it wastes our time needing to read all the way through a post just to find out the person doesn't need help anymore. To mark a post as solved just go to the forum view (Plugin Development) and next to your posts name click on Edit, then use the drop down to mark your post as solved.

    Be polite:
    Do small things to be kind, like thanking people for their help, let people know you appreciate what they're doing for you. Other ways of being polite include answering the questions people ask of you. Most of us aren't very judgemental and don't think you're an idiot for making a mistake, we really do just want that specific question answered to better help you.

    Learn more:
    If you get your questions answered here don't stop there, after your plugin is working keep looking into java and the api to figure it all out! Read the javadocs, do whatever you can to help yourself out as much as possible. While most of us are happy to help, none of us are being paid as teachers, so we're not likely to help someone out if they keep coming back with very very very simple problems that show they haven't really spent any time learning the basics.

    Resources:
    In my opinion the best resources for learning plugin programming really are the basics.

    http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ - the oracle java tutorial (This should be learned first).

    http://wiki.bukkit.org/Plugin_Tutorial - bukkit tutorial(This will help you know everything you need to to use bukkit with java)

    http://jd.bukkit.org/ - bukkit javadocs (if you are uncertain as to how certain methods or objects are used / referenced the java docs is the place to go! #1 resource for plugin programming!)

    Hopefully this little bit of insight will help some of you get the answers you are trying to find faster. And hopefully people will take the notes about self study very seriously as well, cause it really is the best way to become a great programmer!

    is it possible top get this stickied?

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 3, 2016
  2. Offline

    soulofw0lf

    @EvilSeph any chance of a sticky?
     
  3. Offline

    autoit4you

    TnT possible to stick this thread?
     
  4. Offline

    stuntguy3000

    Not going to happen. People dont read these threads anyway.
     
  5. Offline

    soulofw0lf

    i read threads like this all the time on new forums, i find it hard to believe i'm the only one.
     
  6. Offline

    stuntguy3000

    The majority of people don't. Look at the plugin requests (for an example).
     
  7. Offline

    NoLiver92

    soulofw0lf What i would like to add to this great post is searching this forum for what you want as 95% of the time its already been answered.

    And when you have solved your problem change the tag to solved and post the relevant code back on the forum which now works so that it can help other people with issues
     
  8. just searching with google solves almost all problems i've ever encountered.
     
    Gamecube762 likes this.
  9. Offline

    soulofw0lf

    NoLiver92 - good suggestions, both have been added.

    updated to include a link to the thread about reading stack traces!

    EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 3, 2016
  10. Offline

    soulofw0lf

    still hoping to possibly get this stickied
     
  11. Offline

    Samthelord1

    agreed, good job soul.
     
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