The advice is not about not asking dumb questions. > When I ask a vague, dumb plea, I am intentionally trying to weed out the pedantic people who would rather

The advice is not about not asking dumb questions. > When I ask a vague, dumb plea, I am intentionally trying to weed out the pedantic people who would rather write a blog post about how dumb I am than stop to help me. What you're really doing is whittling down your audience to only those who have a lot of time on their hands. (There's a lot of overlap between that group and the one you're trying to avoid.)