You must obey the rules !

posted by Nicolas Brasseur

With the upcoming revamp of the moderation process, here at the JavaBlackBelt secret HQ we are fiercely arguing about What Makes A Question Good. I've summed up our discussions in the form of rules and have decided to share them with the community in this blog entry.

1. A question must be in the right place. A major problem in the basic exams is that many questions are too hard for the category they're in.
2. The question's statement must be clear, easy-to-understand, well-formatted, typo-free and focussed on testing real knowledge.
   Avoid ambiguity: nothing is worse than knowing the answer but hesitating to state it because it's unclear what the question author wants. Example: "How old is J2SE?"
   Avoid trick questions: does a question test the user's attention rather than her technical knowledge?
   Avoid never-ending questions: questions containing too much text/code/choice are usually of poor quality.
3. Avoid cut & paste code questions : ask yourself "Is it easy to find the right answer without even understanding why the answer is right, simply by pasting into an IDE or googling for 10 seconds?"
4. A question must include a clear and pedagogical explanation that will teach the user something. We aim to teach people new things.
5. Don't copy other people's questions. Plagiarism is evil.
   

You must obey the rules !

We've built JavaBlackBelt as a learning tool where people play with exams to discover new things. Help them in their journey. The main mantra when you write a question should be "Do not try to trap people, help them learn and understand the technology."