i was talking about his agenda not yours. and to answer homunculus aswell, im not disregarding the manual nor do i ask for alot of help on the forum. and again this comes from people who have some dry knowledge and logic and dont see that making a topic is far more useful then just going to the manual. this is rude to just point someone to the manual, if you know somthing, say it, share. use the oppurtunity to enrich the people, if you dont know anything just spare the manual talk. and i am certain that most people who just stop using the forum for help are people who got the manual card a few times too meny. i think we can all agree on that.
then i apologise, my bad. i still do support the rest of my points though.
like i said earlier about the correlation between now-inactive accounts and how many of them may or may not have been due to bad attitude, we will never truly know.
maybe some people have given up on the forum for being dealt the manual card too many times, maybe they haven't. i personally don't think there have been as many as you think though.
pointing someone towards the manual ( or at least asking if they have read it ) usually prompts them to actually check the manual first if they haven't already.
the very first step of giving advice to somebody is making sure that they have the knowledge required to take your advice in any meaningful way.
if someone hasn't read the manual on surfaces, then it's a waste of time to just quote the same thing in a forum.
if someone
has read the manual and it still doesn't make sense to them, it isn't a waste of time to explain it to them, because that's the a, to b, to c concept you were talking about.
we always need to make sure that the advice we're about to give isn't just going to go over someone's head because they don't understand 20% of the functions and their relationship with the rest.
if you get told to read the manual, read the manual. if you've read it, double check you didn't miss something. if you're sure you haven't missed anything, then it's perfectly reasonable to ask for an explanation.
the main thing is, the more time someone has to invest into helping someone, the more of a time-consuming hassle it can be. not only do the helpers need to be considerate, the askers do too.
the people who do know things but ask you to refer to the manual do so because they know you've missed something.
the manual doesn't exist as a scapegoat for a lack of knowledge or expertise, it exists for documentation on how things work.
if you don't know how things work, ask the manual. if you don't know why it doesn't work despite the manual, ask a person.
yes, people can be lazy when pointing you to the manual, but people can also be lazy when they don't read it.