A little note for you Experts out there. Don’t take yourself too seriously; We are all here to learn and grow. Coddle the dumb ones and challenge the smar

A little note for you Experts out there. Don’t take yourself too seriously; We are all here to learn and grow. Coddle the dumb ones and challenge the smart ones. If you consider the ratio of expertise to ignorant questions you'll see that this is really bad advice. Experts, even when they dabble in Q&A, are not by definition tutors. It's unfair to expect that whole category of people to waste their own time and the time of people with smart questions by 'coddling' those who fail to grasp this fact. When dealing with people who are clearly overreaching their current capabilities, or who ask 'how' questions without any interest in the 'why', giving them the cold shoulder and an invitation to gather more background knowledge from published resources is often the best service that can be done. Another factor in support fatigue among open source software experts is the (often inept) commercial application of the software, which is commonly associated with a lack of respect for the software itself and for those who have deep knowledge of it. Then* you get questions paired with criticism like 'I know exactly how to do this in Y, why can't stupid X behave the way I want?' or insistent pleading like 'I need to get this working ASAP! Please halp!'. When the intent behind the question is not to learn but to make money faster, volunteers support 'staff' are not obliged to step up. Anyway, advising experts in general to change the way they volunteer time and information is pointless. They know what works for them and there are no levers on IRC to make them change their habits. PS, config help on #apache? What network is that? :) * I know, not only then.