Where do you start trying to help some people who are so pathetically ignorant (and I don’t mean that in a bad way), that their lack of knowledge includes not only a lack of any real understanding of the technical issues, but also the fact that they are obviously trying to communicate in a second or third language?

This is the Internuts dilemma which, it seems, is not going to be resolved by spoon feeding a simple answer. Apparently, or at least I think I observe, this is the empirical solution at work daily; best to ignore them, so their thirst for knowledge motivates them to study further and learn for themselves, in the depth necessary to solve their problem, rather than just help them with easy answers to their current problems.

Am I right or am I left?

But when helpful advice like RTFM and “Google is your friend” go un-headed, what should be our collective responsibility to them? Any or none?

What do you think?