<p><strong>Background</strong></p>

<p>First of all please note that I have been a user on SE sites for over two years now; more than 20 months on CV. While active on StackOverflow and Sports.SE I never quite managed to get going here, despite my best efforts. It is clear to me that I am experiencing a communication problem with members of the community, perhaps due to the fact that I am not a statistician by education. </p>

<p>Please take a look at <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/3014/posdef?tab=questions">my previous questions</a> (there are only 8), and you can perhaps see that I have been trying best to explain my background and question as clearly as possible. That being the case, more often then not, I get questions in return, and sometimes even dismissive remarks. In most cases questions end up turning into endless swamps; more I try to salvage something, more I get stuck on comments/questions that lead nowhere. To make matters worse, I seem to have similar problems with (bio)statisticians I meet at conferences. Needless to say, I find this very frustrating.</p>

<p><strong>Question(s)</strong></p>

<p>Based on the background I have mentioned above, I realized that I am here to learn and improve on my half-forgotten understanding of statistics. So I would really appreciate if you could help me phrase my questions better, so that I can hopefully get more useful answers in the future, or better yet, so that I can make better use of the answers I get to my questions. (Note that this is an attempt to make a good FAQ entry for new members as well, we are currently trying out something like this for Sports.SE.)</p>

<ul>
<li><p>How can I make it clear that my understanding of statistics is not complete (i.e. I might be experienced in some subjects but might have completely forgotten/misunderstood some fundamentals)? This is important to avoid being overwhelmed/confused by the answers from more advanced members of the community. </p></li>
<li><p>How can I make sure that the answers/comments I get are to the point of what's being asked? (more often than not I do not see the relevance of the comments/questions I get to my questions) Misunderstandings occur often, and are usually a major part of the problem, IMHO.</p></li>
<li><p>What are some characteristics of a good CV question?</p></li>
<li><p>If the problems that I have been experiencing are due to the fact that I am not a statistician, is this site ONLY aimed at statisticians, or for people that want to get answers to their questions on statistics? </p></li>
</ul>

<p>I apologize for the long post and hope that you can provide some insights on this matter.</p>

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<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I wrote and rewrote my title several times, not being happy with the way it sounds... If you don't think that the title accurately reflects the content please feel free to comment/edit.</p>

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<p><strong>Edit:</strong> I got some nice comments, thanks to @whuber and @Procrastinator. I would really like it if the input was given in answers rather than comments, so that I could refer to/comment back to individual suggestions instead of having a long chain of comments to the question at hand...</p>
