Don't Ask to Ask, Just Ask

Ben Edition, inspired heavily by https://solhsa.com/dontask.html

In online communities, people will sometimes open a conversation like this:

Any Premiere Pro users here?

This is bad form, for several reasons. What the person is actually asking here is:

Is anyone here good at Premiere Pro and is willing to commit time into solving my issue that may or may not be related to Premiere Pro, and may turn out to be a generalised video editing question?

There are plenty of reasons why people who do have the knowledge would not admit to it. By asking, you're asking for more than what you think you're asking.

You're asking people to take responsibility. You're questioning people's confidence in their abilities. Not only that, but you're also unnecessarily walling other people out. I often answer questions related to editing software or tools I have never used, because the answer can be fairly generalised or (at times) common sense.

Alternatively, such an opening can be interpreted like this:

I have a question about video editing, but I'm too lazy to actually formalise it in words unless there's someone right here right now this microsecond who might be able to answer it.

These people tend to call a Discord server "dead" if they don't get an answer within 5 minutes of that, too. Don't be that person.

Overall, asking your itty-bitty opening question comes off as fairly lazy, and in the asynchronous world of text-based communication, you're plainly extending the amount of time it'll take to fix your issue unnecessarily.

Help us help you. You need to help yourself before you can expect much of a reply.

Oh, and say thank you afterwards. Listen to what is said, too. If you ignore enough answers, you'll just get blocked or ignored entirely.