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And now, the first few replies to this have been - guess what - destructive, sarcastic, scathing and rude. FWIW, I don't see HN as a "do my homework" site. I

by brk 16y ago

And now, the first few replies to this have been - guess what - destructive, sarcastic, scathing and rude. FWIW, I don't see HN as a "do my homework" site. I try to offer helpful replies to anyone that appears to have put some thought and consideration into a question. The OP here does not appear to have spent any time getting acquainted with this site or its norms. Since the days of 300 baud modems I've never seen a site of any caliber that treated people asking for resources from the members with "respect" when those requestors did not themselves show a similar degree of respect. Your answer to the OP was very well written, and the sort of thing that any halfway motivated person could have found with maybe an hours worth of googling around. That hour of their time would have enabled them to come here and ask much more detailed and targeted questions, and would have saved a lot of people from potentially having to be Google for them and answering the question. In short, I'm all for helping people that help themselves.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
But people still feel the need to show themselves superior by making comments that are utterly unhelpful. They could simply remain silent. I agree entirely that the OP should do their homework. I agree entirely that the question really merits no reply at all. The point is that the quoted article can be paraphrased as saying "Be helpful, or shut up." That got so many upvotes, and yet here is the same unhelpful, destructive behaviour. I guess in short it's a case of "If you can't say something nice (helpful) then don't say anything at all."
- brk 16y ago
  Some people make snarky comments to feel superior, some do it to demonstrate the insanity of the question. You could post nothing, and then possibly cause the OP to think no one has seen their question, so they post it again. For this particular case I wanted to acknowledge the question with an answer that was about as parsable and logical as the question itself.

by brk 16y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

But people still feel the need to show themselves superior by making comments that are utterly unhelpful. They could simply remain silent. I agree entirely that the OP should do their homework. I agree entirely that the question really merits no reply at all. The point is that the quoted article can be paraphrased as saying "Be helpful, or shut up." That got so many upvotes, and yet here is the same unhelpful, destructive behaviour. I guess in short it's a case of "If you can't say something nice (helpful) then don't say anything at all."

brk 16y ago
Some people make snarky comments to feel superior, some do it to demonstrate the insanity of the question. You could post nothing, and then possibly cause the OP to think no one has seen their question, so they post it again. For this particular case I wanted to acknowledge the question with an answer that was about as parsable and logical as the question itself.