And if you do want to go to the waterfall instead of the well, here's the original:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html I had forgotten it was written by Eric Raymond and peers! Talk about old as dirt.
Here's a "money quote" from early in the introduction:
> The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, “Good question!” is a strong and sincere compliment.
>
> Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.
>
> What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks — they take without giving back, and they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this “losers” (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it “lusers”).
Walter
> To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rubyonrails-talk/1572646E-E290-4C02-8A21-4BBFC0BF44C6%40wdstudio.com.