Asking Good Questions in Community Forums

We encourage you to do a bit of research first. See if your question has already been answered in various channels:

Make sure you check the Cassandra logs, application logs and operating system logs because the log entries often give clues.

If you still need help, here are some things to consider when posting your question.

Good: “Cassandra failed to start after upgrading from 3.11.9 to 4.0.1”

Bad: “HELP!!! Cassandra doesn’t start”

Often users ask if it’s good to change parameter X or if they should run command Y but this often isn’t helpful. Instead, explain the issue you ran into and what outcome you’re after so you’ll be more likely to achieve it.

Provide background information. For example, a node went down because of a hardware failure or you were patching the OS. Knowing how you ran into a problem makes it easier to help you.

If you’ve tried some workarounds based on what you’ve researched on the internet, include the details in your question. It shows that you have made an effort to look for answers on your own.

In many cases, the answer depends on the version you’re running. Include things like Cassandra version, Java version, driver/framework version (for example, or Java driver 4.11 or Spring Boot 3.3.1).

Don’t just post the error and expect an answer. We often need the full error message and the full stack trace. And in order to decipher the stack trace, make sure you provide the version as above.

Note how you have configured cassandra.yaml (for example). It isn’t necessary to post entire configuration files, just include the properties/items relevant to your question.

Depending on your question, it might be relevant to describe your cluster’s topology; number of nodes; whether the nodes are on-premise or in a public cloud; whether they are VMs, pods or bare-metal.

For problematic queries, include the table schema and the full CQL query.

For app-related problems, provide some minimal code that reproduces the issue. It would also help to provide sample data that illustrates the problem.

List the expected result/output versus the actual result/output you got.

For questions about developing apps or need help operating Cassandra, post on the Stack network. Please do not cross-post the same question to other channels such as Slack or the mailing lists.

Show your support for the community and follow the cassandra tag by clicking on the blue Watch tag button on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange!

For broad, opinion-based questions, general discussions, ask how to get help, or receive announcements, please subscribe to the user mailing list. Security issues need to be reported to the Apache Security Team.

Hopefully you found this guide helpful. But it is just a guide – there are no strict rules for asking questions. The community is here to help for everyone’s benefit. So go ahead, how we can help you today?