I forget this isn't widely known, so here's a social tool. The "correct" way to ask someone if they know X when trying to decide how or whether to explain something is to ask something along the lines of "How familiar are you with X?"

I figured this out when people asked about Hypothesis and had such wildly varying backgrounds that it was almost impossible to know how to start, so I started asking things like "How familiar are you with property-based testing?" or "How familiar are you with software testing?"

Once you've got a better idea of their background and have established a baseline, you can start asking things like "Have you heard of X?" or "Do you know about Y?", but the "How familiar are you...?" question is almost always a better opener.

To be clear I don't think you have a moral or social obligation to ask it this way. It's fine if you don't, and most forms work fine most of the time, this one just seems to reliably land better and it's worth knowing that.

Some people are attempting to come up with translations of this (I can't personally comment on quality - I'm very bad at non-English languages, sorry)

French

More French.

German.

@DRMacIver This has the effect of inviting into a conversation (tell me about your X story, experience), rather than lecturing / talking at. Problem w/ later: it can easily turn to “speaking for you” - key is speak for yourself, your own experience. Your tack can open discourse (key).

@yarkot Yup, absolutely. It can also lead to lecturing/talking at in situations where that's appropriate (e.g. this often happened with my Hypothesis example when their background in the subject was weak), but it starts by checking whether it's appropriate.

@DRMacIver I think even better for 2., it does prejudge but in the positive direction; it has a hint of "you're very smart so you know _something_ about X, only question is how much"