Welcome to answers.semanticweb.com!
This post outlines the etiquette for this site that the community has agreed upon. If you'd like the community to answer your questions—and if you'd like to get the most out of this site—reading the following is highly recommended.
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This is a Question and Answer site. Someone asks a question, and the community answers it. Answers should only answer the question! Comments on specific answers or questions can be left as comments. You can edit your question at any time: please don't post duplicates just to fix typos! Also, please don't piggyback on other people's questions: if you want clarification for a specific answer, use a comment. If you have a new question, ask a new question. While you cannot post comments everywhere until you have sufficient karma you can always comment on your own questions and answers.
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Please keep questions on-topic and of broad interest. The topic of this forum is the Semantic Web, including standards like RDF, RDFS, OWL, SPARQL, RIF, RDB2RDF, etc., as well as research, data, methodologies and tools surrounding these standards. Questions specifically about Linked Data publishing, principles, or best practices are also encouraged. If a question is very specific (i.e., relates to an obscure tool few people use, or a very localised problem), you may have better luck contacting a more specific mailing list. In general, you should only ask a question if it is likely to be of interest to at least one or two other people out on the Web.
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Before you ask your question, please explore the site. Use the search option and the tagging system to see if your question was already asked and answered before.
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Please try to make your question answerable: include sufficient information that the community can make an effort to answer the question. One line questions of the form I tried to do X with tool Y and got an error please help are generally not answerable. Please remember to include code snippets, sample data, error stack traces and any other relevant information (including why you want to do X) which will make it easier for the community to answer your question or even suggest a better/alternative way of achieving X. Questions of the form I tried doing X with tool Y, here's my code, here's my data, here's the error trace I received and this is why I want to do X (preferably not all on one line!) are generally much better questions and much more likely to get answers. Also, show that you've done a bit of effort to find the answer on your own, and don't ask questions that a simple Google search could have answered for you (e.g. where do I find the documentation for tool X?).
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Please use an appropriate title for your question which reflects the content about your question. A good title helps people determine whether they want to look at your question and try to answer it. Titles which are too vague/general are unlikely to attract good answers. A question titled Problem with SPARQL Query is not particularly descriptive, something like How do I write a SPARQL Query that uses grouping is much more descriptive and more likely that people will try to answer it. Similarily titles like Question about X where X is some library/tool are poor titles, a title like How do I do Y with X or Error when trying to do Y with X are much better titles.
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Please do not post duplicates of your own question, if you don't get an answer in a satisfactory timeframe it may not be a good question and posting a duplicate is unlikely to change that.
Consider editing your question to add more detail, re-phrase your question or include what you've tried so far if you haven't already included this information.
If you think your question is good and just not getting enough attention simply comment as such on your own question as this will bump you back up the list of recently modified questions and increase the chance that people look at it. -
This is a Collaborative site. The community votes on which questions are interesting and which answers are most beneficial. People gain "Karma" for asking good questions and providing good answers, which allows them to help out more on the site. If you ask a question, please vote up all those answers that are helpful to you. Once you are satisfied that your question has been covered, please accept the best answer. See here for details on accepting answers. Nobody gets paid to answer your questions, so act accordingly: be polite.
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This is a High-Visibility Archive of Semantic Web questions. The purpose of your questions outlasts your needs: other people with the same problem or curiosity will hopefully find your question through Google/Yahoo!/Bing/other. Keep questions neat! Think carefully about the wording of your question title and tags! Get familiar with the "Markdown" syntax and use it to format answers and questions for clarity. For the first few questions, it's okay to get the formatting jumbled; others will edit. Non-native English speakers need not be shy; again others will edit. Still, the community appreciates all efforts to keep questions and answers well-formatted and well-phrased. Having well-phrased questions will encourage more people to give better answers. Having well-phrased answers will attract upvotes, accepts, and Karma!
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Be concise. Avoid text with "hi" and "thanks" and "plz it's urgent". These will be edited out. In general, avoid "chat speak". Keep a polite, objective tone and say thanks with up-votes and accepts (and maybe a comment if you are particularly pleased with an answer). If you upvote and accept answers, people will be more inclined to answer future questions.
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Please Declare Biases you may have in answering questions. It's okay to promote research or tools you or your company are involved in, but please declare that you work on them. (This is not necessary where a question specifically asks about that tool, etc.)
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Lots more details are in the FAQ. Check it out!