[Galaxy S I9000 Android Development] Dr. Strange:
Whenever someone is posting a question that you feel qualifies them as "lazy" "unlearned" or just plain "stupid", you have a variety of options.

After a short consideration, it seems to me, the main paths you can undertake are these:

1. The Path of the Care Bear - Answer the stupid question fully, providing the solution, some context and useful links to information that, had it been read beforehand, would have enlightened the "lazy" enough so that he could have solved his own problem.

Kind hearted as this might be, it does not encourage people to educate themselves, and reinforces the stupid question asking without reading or searching beforehand, lazy behaviour. However, I feel that people taking this path is not one of this thread's problems.

2. The path of the Grasshoppaaah Master - Answer the question by providing links to the relevant info, perhaps the relevant section and a strong suggestion the "lazy" one bookmark these for future reference (Guides, FAQ, what have you - all of you in a position to answer questions probably have them bookmarked so it's really, really, REALLY easy to do this; many of you have the links in your signatures...).

This path does provide help (makes you feel all warm inside, doesn't it) AND encourages the growth of an educated, CM using community.

3. The Path of Many - Ignore the question, safe in the knowledge that someone else with more time on their hands, or a greater urge to increase their thanks meter, WILL answer. This path is suited to those that feel, like me, that the burden of linking to an FAQ is unbearable.

4. The Path of the Holy Inquisitor (aka The Path of the Soup Nazi) - Get annoyed. Make desperate, disdainful faces. Look down your nose, frown, and then proceed to scold the lazy, the unread, the impudent. Explain to them that words, whatever their previous experience with them, have different meanings in this thread and in regards to CM. Tell them off, berate them for fouling up the pristine atmosphere of this ivory tower circle of initiates with their moaning and their utterances of discontent. Make them aware of the sheer enormous amount of work they request be done in their behalf.

And just THEN, after you made sure to go through all the above ritual, should you give tongue to the holy words: "USE SEARCH". As a sign of your boundless kindness and power of forgiveness you can now maybe throw them a link or direct them to someone's signature.

Aside from making the inquisitor feel good about his righteous a**, this path will make the thread insufferable and intimidating for (I will venture a guess) the majority of silent readers. In the end this sort of answer may be useful to the one posing the question, but the main beneficiary of a post like this is the poster.

5. The path of YouTube - this is just like the third path, but instead of ignoring the question because you are busy, you just ignore it because you have better things to do, like watch funny cats on YouTube. Much better than The Path of the Holy Inquisitor, it still benefits YOU, the potential poster, but has none of the drawbacks.

Aaaaaany way, I've spent probably hundreds of hours now, lurking around these forums, being amused or educated. I can't, for the life of me, understand people that fell the need to behave like primary school teacher. Yes, the questions may be stupid; yes, many people don't even bother to read the OP, let alone look around for the FAQ; yes, most people that do get annoyed ALL the time are also VERY helpful (and have my thanks for that btw). But is posting a link such hard work that it warrants an aggressive an answer to go along with it?

Around here it's not the stupid or lazy questions that make me cringe, it's the impatient, rude, arrogant answers.

I'm all for educating people about the meaning of "stable" in cyanogenica. But let's try also steering the expert answers to a more light hearted and generally agreeable manner of expression ;-)

Look at rschenck - he slaps ppl around on occasions but humour always sweetens the pill.

See? I even inserted an winking smiley at the end!

---------- Post added at 09:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 AM ----------

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