commit ba2c01333a91ea3d6d39aeaa85126813d85e0b92
parent 39faf5bf1d6067d165a97bff64adfa6c75af3ca3
Author: Eamon Caddigan <eamon.caddigan@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2023 11:07:11 -0700
Short post I wrote because I'm mad
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 34 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/posts/being_unhelpful/index.md b/content/posts/being_unhelpful/index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: "Please don’t be unhelpful on the internet"
+date: 2023-08-30T10:39:28-07:00
+draft: false
+categories:
+- Programming
+---
+
+One of my top pet-peeves on internet discussion and help boards (dating back
+to the Usenet days, covering the web forum era, and continuing in this
+current age of Stack Overflow hegemony) occurs when a person replies to a
+request for help or information with a smarmy and dismissive, "have you
+tried searching the internet?"[^rtfm]. It's rude and unhelpful, but there
+are plenty of rude and unhelpful things on the 'net; what elevates this
+behavior to _infuriating_ is that in 100% of the cases I've encountered
+these posts, I found them because **I'm searching the internet with the same
+problem**.
+
+Not only does this behavior waste the time of the person being "punished"
+for... What? Asking a question the wrong way? ...It wastes the time of every
+subsequent person who's _doing exactly the thing they're supposed to be
+doing_.
+
+Please stop writing replies like this. If you've done it recently, consider
+revisiting the message and apologizing. Moving forward, feel free to ignore
+questions you don't like; if you want to show off you're welcome to respond
+as tersely as you'd like with a pointer a good source of information (such
+as the relevant section of the documentation—which now only appears in web
+search results after pages and pages of Stack Overflow posts full of this
+stuff). Future searchers will appreciate you, and right now they definitely
+do not.
+
+[^rtfm]: Or its pre-search antecedent, "have you tried reading the manual?",
+a sentiment sometimes abbreviated as "RTFM".
