READ THIS Before Posting to Null Byte (Update 10-Jan-2016)

After seeing the title of this post from me, you might be thinking, "Why did The Joker made another post on a topic on which we already have a nice sticky post?"

The fact is that though ghost_ has made a great post, it is more aimed at the general community than the newbies. Now don't get me wrong, but you already know that we have a lot of 'replicated', as I call it, questions asked by different people.

Now this is more of a set of guidelines than a set of rules, but then again, how much of a difference we have?

Search Your Question Before Asking

I don't know about you, but what I'd prefer, unless mine is a VERY specific question, is to find an answer already out there. That way, I wouldn't have to wait for an answer, because the task of waiting has already been done by someone else.

And the good thing is that every page of the Null Byte (except the moderation panel, of course) exists in the public domain. Okay, you don't want to spend hours looking at every webpage Google throws at you (though that's what I recommend), but searching the question on Null Byte is the least you can do.

And believe me, we are not wanting to expand our 3290-article count (at the time of writing), by 'replicated' questions.

Some examples in my mind are 'What is hacking? Please tell me I want to know" and "How to hack facebook accounts?". Now these questions ought to be answered a million times over the internet, but these are the answers I'd give-

"Hacking is the art of exploiting systems and the skill required to tackle similar difficult problems. The word originates from cutting through woods in a jungle to go forward. We have 4 types of hacking- Client side, Server side, MITM and SE"(you can put mitm and se in a combined 'spoofing', but for simplicity)(Then maybe a brief explanation)

"Facebook has no known vulnerabilities, since if it did, anyone could exploit it and cause major traffic concerns for the #3 Alexa ranker. It is doing EVERYTHING it can to increase its security, so you have absolutely no chance in any 'instant' server side hacking. The only serious problem it should have'd be passwords in the common MD5 hash, which isn't big enough, considering you can't even as much as get to the database. Try your luck on the non-server side hacks"

And these are the answers I'd give the 100th time-(Plus answers don't come instantly)
"Hacking is breaking into systems"
"You can't, it's already too secure"
Now, askers, which of these you'd prefer? Add to it that there is no wait time in 1st one, and weigh accordingly.

Ask in Proper English

You don't know English well? Then, at least run some spellchecker and grammar checker on the words. I could tell you that the 18th word in this post is gramatically wrong. But nobody noticed that until now (maybe you did, but you weren't going to get annoyed, were you?). I don't know how many errors I'd have made unintentionally.

Well, if you can't ask in perfect english, at least make it easy enough to read. Use these tools to check the text before posting, if you don't feel confident on yourself-

Post in the Right Category [[Update]]

To make it easier, I shall explain the 3 categories here. You see, it doesn't feel good when some of us who publish How-Tos get unlucky enough to have their posts pushed back by questions, or when those of us who did the research see articles posted in random sections.

The thing is, on WHT, the audience doesn't have the power to close, report or move your questions like they do on StackExchange. (Byline: WHT, or WonderHowTo, is the parent company of Null Byte)

How-To section - Here, the creators post tutorials, and whole of this section is made specifically for tutorials that provide information about a topic/question that can begin with a 'How to' (As you can see, this post COULD be titled 'How to post on Null Byte', but that defeats the purpose and is already title of a post), and it is NOT for questions, or anything that isn't a tutorial.

Inspiration section - Here, you can post anything that isn't a tutorial or a question, though it is more specifically meant for topics that you want to share with the community and aren't really looking for replies.

Forum section - It is the section meant for anything that you need a reply to or want to start a conversation, or pretty much anything that doesn't fit in the above sections, while it is aimed specifically towards asking questions.

The End

Not that much to say, I believe if everyone follows these 3 at the least, then it'll be better for the quality of Null Byte. If I find anything worth adding as much as them, I shall do it. It isn't too hard to follow this much steps at least.