index.md (1627B)
1 --- 2 title: "Please don’t be unhelpful on the internet" 3 date: 2023-08-30T10:39:28-07:00 4 draft: false 5 categories: 6 - Programming 7 --- 8 9 One of my top pet-peeves on internet discussion and help boards (dating back 10 to the Usenet days, covering the web forum era, and continuing in this 11 current age of Stack Overflow hegemony) occurs when a person replies to a 12 request for help or information with a smarmy and dismissive, "have you 13 tried searching the internet?"[^rtfm]. It's rude and unhelpful, but there 14 are plenty of rude and unhelpful things on the 'net; what elevates this 15 behavior to _infuriating_ is that in 100% of the cases I've encountered 16 these posts, I found them because **I'm searching the internet with the same 17 problem**. 18 19 Not only does this behavior waste the time of the person being "punished" 20 for... What? Asking a question the wrong way? ...It wastes the time of every 21 subsequent person who's _doing exactly the thing they're supposed to be 22 doing_. 23 24 Please stop writing replies like this. If you've done it recently, consider 25 revisiting the message and apologizing. Moving forward, feel free to ignore 26 questions you don't like; if you want to show off you're welcome to respond 27 as tersely as you'd like with a pointer a good source of information (such 28 as the relevant section of the documentation—which now only appears in web 29 search results after pages and pages of Stack Overflow posts full of this 30 stuff). Future searchers will appreciate you, and right now they definitely 31 do not. 32 33 [^rtfm]: Or its pre-search antecedent, "have you tried reading the manual?", 34 a sentiment sometimes abbreviated as "RTFM".