How to get answers for my unanswered questions?

Some of my questions are not answered by any one. So after few hours or few days that question is not in the list of recent questions. What should I do if I want to get answers for those questions?

[John D'Errico]

Don't add answers just to make comments on your question, or any question. A comment should be a comment. There is a button that will open up a comment box for a new comment on any question or any answer. USE IT.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You can post a comment to the Question reminding people about the question. Common comments in such cases include "Does anyone have any ideas" and "Bump".

You can, as Greg suggests, try the newsgroup, or another resource such as stackedgen

Your QPSK question is a communications theory question rather than a MATLAB question, so you should have posted it somewhere that discusses communications theory, or find some local resource (e.g., a university) where people know something about communications theory.

Beyond that, it becomes time to hire a consultant (or possibly tutor), if you can find one. Mathworks does offer a consultancy program.

As a general statement (not directed at you in particular): one of the best ways to get a good response is to ask better questions

[i Venky]

Thanks a lot. Now I got the point.

[Greg Heath]

There are zillions of NEWsgroups. Search on QPSK and/or communications

[John D'Errico]

An important point is to not get impatient. Don't go bumping up your question after only an hour or so, especially since much of the audience who may be able to answer your question may be sound asleep when you posted it! People live all around the world who post answers. So it matters not when you post a question, there will be a large fraction of people who will not have the opportunity to see it for 6-12 hours.

Answer 2

[Jan]

After asking a question, it is recommended to care about the answers. Sometimes users ask questions for clarifications. If you forget to answer these questions or do not provide the necessary information, the users can get the impression, that you are not really interested in a solution. If somebody creates an answer and you neither accept it nor explain in the comment section, why this does not solve the problem, the impression of a missing interest will grow.

There are some magic keywords, which discourage others to spend time for helping. E.g. in the thread http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/18418-gaussian-mixture-model-maximum-likelihood you answered Walter: "I tried that file and it didn't work.", but you did not explain any details. Ignoring Walter's question "What happened when you tried that file?" is not a good idea in this forum.

Therefore I suggest to step through the list of your former questions, answer all questions for clarifications, accept matching answers or explain why the answer does not solve your problem. Then the contributors will see and feel, that you appreciate their voluntary assistence. We are all human and although this is a forum about a programming language, it is a social interaction which needs a lot of politeness as glue. Matlab Answers is not an answering machine.

Please be aware, that I have not read all your questions and that this answer is not thought for you specifically, but for all readers of this thread. I hope to encourage you to increase your participation in this community.

[John]

Thank you Sir. It's a very nice explanation.

Answer 3

[Daniel Shub]

Even better than just bumping your question is to edit your question with what you have found out since you asked the question. Presumably, if the question is still important to you, than you have thought about the question again. Maybe that new piece of insight you have had will help others help you.

[Jan]

+1: Good point. A "smart" bumping is better than a dull repetion.

[Jason Ross]

I like this, as well. I run into things which stymie me, not only in my professional life, but also my personal life.

There is no one who cares about the answers more than I do, so sometimes you have to take questions and break them down into smaller chunks as part of finding the overall solution you are looking for. Bumping your questions with "I found out that when X is true and Y is false this doesn't happen" or "I tried approach A, B, C and D and I don't really understand why A worked but the rest didn't" adds more information to the discussion.

Sometimes I've found solutions to questions by merely composing a email to a colleague asking for help. I'm forced to put my thoughts in an orderly manner explaining the problem and what I've tried already to solve it -- and I realize there is something that I didn't explore that I should have. I've heard of people using a similar process where they try and explain the problem to a stuffed animal, action figure, or even the empty air.

Your overall question, though is the definition of science or engineering -- there is a problem that needs solving or something that needs figuring out and there's not an answer in existence already. So you take the tools you have (your brain, computer, lab equipment, etc), add in some colleagues (professors, friends, co-workers) and try to get to the bottom of something!

Answer 4

[Image Analyst]

And just to finish up by stating the obvious, it's possible that either you haven't stated your problem precisely enough for anyone to figure out what you said, or quite simply no one knows. Since there seem to be only a few dozen people who answer questions here, it's quite possible that none of them have experience in the subject area you asked about, particularly ones where people ask things like " Does anyone have any experience doing triple bozon simulation using a modified Las Vegas technique on Chevy manifolds using 4D tensors, as explained in Douglas Adams paper......"? Probably no one, at least no one yet, has ever heard of that esoteric method.

Answer 5

[Greg Heath]

Try the newsgroup.

Hope this helps.

Greg

Answer 6

[Meh]

just edit your answer by pressing the EDIT button. and your question will be listed as the most recent question.

[Jan]

It is better to add an explicite comment as e.g. "Bump". Otherwise the readers waste their time with searching for the difference to the former version of the question. Any confusion of the readers reduce their motivation to answer.