I think that the situations are far more nuanced than the article suggests. A couple of specific scenarios come to mind: In a workplace, helping coworkers gai

I think that the situations are far more nuanced than the article suggests. A couple of specific scenarios come to mind: In a workplace, helping coworkers gain greater competence is a given only to the extent that the person asking for help has actually done some research before asking their question. However, there are coworkers who are basically lazy and expect others to pick up their slack. These are often rather crafty and make their managers think better of them than their coworkers. Like Wally of the Dilbert strips. On forums, e.g. StackOverflow, the noise generated by lazy askers makes it hard to find relevant answers. Perhaps there could be a newbie's corner to which questions could be relegated. Personally, I don't see the point of answering poorly researched questions even with a "RTFM". When Googling, I often get frustrated by the mass of newbie questions and the resulting nasty answers. There doesn't seem to be any way to specify "guru class Q&A". Compared to many forum sites, I actually find SO and its siblings to be far more useful. Perhaps it is the reputation system that helps identify the stronger contributors.