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Comment by michaelchisari | Hacker News Reader

Sure, I could see that being a problem, but if the question that the "help vampire" is asking is a valid one, then you have to remember that all online conversations have an audience, and that your response is as much to the audience as it is to the person you're directly responding to.

Even just politely linking a similar question and response is better than responding with RTFM.

> RTFM has always been part of the hacker culture

That doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, or anything worth keeping.

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Help vampires do not ask valid questions very often. It's very unlikely a community will have RTFM as a standard response to valid questions (i.e. those that provide context and show effort on the part of the asker), with one exception: when the question has been asked countless times already, and the asker could have seen it if they had made the minimum effort of reading the community's FAQ. In which case, RTFM -- or rather, a link to the FAQ -- is the best response.

> That doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, or anything worth keeping.

But it does make it not trollish behavior, which we were discussing. Hacker culture was not trollish, this was always part of hacker culture, therefore it's neither new nor trollish behavior.

I think a variation of RTFM, let's call it GentleRTFM, is both worth keeping and necessary.

I think a variation of RTFM, let's call it GentleRTFM, is both worth keeping and necessary.

I'm in agreement on that. Although I also think Socratic method should also be employed in those cases.

>...one exception: when the question has been asked countless times already, and the asker could have seen it if they had made the minimum effort of reading the community's FAQ. In which case, RTFM -- or rather, a link to the FAQ -- is the best response.

This is actually the RTFM-ish situations I hate the most; specifically as someone searching a forum and finding a thread or threads close to my own question, only to find the only responses are rudely unhelpful.

I get not answering an insipid post, or a mod locking/deleting one but replying to a question you find dumb or repetitive is a waste of time to everyone involved.

Just like "Don't feed the Trolls," I feel one shouldn't raise the post count of a time sink.

I suppose not answering at all is an acceptable solution; a RTFM response does imply a certain irritation directed at the asker (for not doing their homework). In the case of help vampires it does nothing more than signalling irritation to other community regulars, since the clueless undead -- by definition -- won't RTFM or even know what that means.

Answering with a link to the canonical question doesn't seem rude to me, however.

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