question

Jeffrey Blattman avatar image
Jeffrey Blattman asked Jeffrey Blattman answered

How do I ask a good question?

How do I post a question in a way that allows other members to provide me the information I need?

10 |2000

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1 Answer

Jeffrey Blattman avatar image
Jeffrey Blattman answered

Here are some basic guidelines,

  1. This is a technical support forum for developers integrating with the Clover development platform. A good guideline is that if you are a merchant, or a user of Clover, this is not the right place.

  2. Do not ask business or marketing-related questions here. Please contact appmarketbusiness@clover.com.

  3. Before posting, search for similar questions.

  4. Give an overview of the problem first. Explain your motivation, or what you are trying to accomplish and why. This allows other members to not only answer your technical question, but suggest alternative ways to achieve your goal. This also helps others give targeted, specific and to the point answers to your question.

  5. When reporting what you think may be a bug, provide a minimal, complete, verifiable example. This allows Clover developers to quickly look at your code a) ensure you are using APIs correctly and b) reproduce the problem locally. If a problem can be reproduced, it's 1/2 of the way to being fixed.

  6. Other members are much more likely to engage if you post a clean, easy to read question. Proofread your question for spelling and grammar and take a few moments to learn and format your post using markdown. Especially ensure that your code snippets are preformatted and readable.

  7. If you need to post large code snippets or log files, use pastebin.

  8. If you are reporting a crash, include the stack trace and logcat (see above about use of pastebin). Also provide the approximate time of the crash and the merchant name or ID. This helps Clover associate your problem with logs on our servers.

  9. If you post or link to logcat, always add the -v time option.

  10. If a question is answered, follow up and mark it as such. This allows other members to understand that this is the correct solution so they need not re-ask.

  11. It's okay to ask the poster clarifying questions in comments, but don't start lengthy 2-way conversations. Use the site's private message feature to carry on lengthy conversations. When private conversations reach a conclusion, follow up and update your questions and answer so others can benefit.

  12. Avoid posting follow up questions or comments as an answer. Use comments to ask the poster if you need clarification on their question.

  13. Do update your questions and answers as you get new information. Don't hesitate you delete your questions if they turn out to be invalid or confusing. This goes for answer too. If you discover your answer is incorrect or someone has answer it better, feel free to delete your answer. Ideally every question has one excellent answer.

  14. When reporting a problem experienced on a Clover device, include the Clover hardware model (Mini, Mobile, Station, etc). Also include the relevant versions of the APIs and services you are using. While it may not always be obvious where to find such versions, a good rule of thumb is to include the firmware version (adb shell getprop | grep ro.build.version.incremental) and the version of the Clover Engine APK (adb shell dumpsys package com.clover.engine | grep versionCode).

10 |2000

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 512.0 KiB each and 1.0 MiB total.

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