I often see vaguely framed questions posted, and I would like to help their askers, but I cannot, because their questions are missing key information. 

Instead of having a long discussion in the comments, I would like to point them to some resource or checklist, which will help them form a good question.

Given that our [Help Center][1] uses this Q&A as the canonical question for this topic, ***What concise advice would you give on how to ask a good question?*** 

Do keep in mind that this advice should be specific to GIS SE i.e. we do not want to simply link to the multipage [How To Ask Questions The Smart Way][2] by Eric Raymond, or '[What have you tried?][3]'


  [1]: https://gis.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
  [2]: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/