Take some of your own advice -- branding someone a "dickwad" is not exactly
helpful. Try
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#id3003018 --
one of your own suggestions.
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way
Be gentle. Problem-related stress can make people seem rude or stupid even
when they're not.
Reply to a first offender off-line. There is no need of public humiliation
for someone who may have made an honest mistake. A real newbie may not know
how to search archives or where the FAQ is stored or posted.
If you don't know for sure, say so! A wrong but authoritative-sounding
answer is worse than none at all. Don't point anyone down a wrong path
simply because it's fun to sound like an expert. Be humble and honest; set a
good example for both the querent and your peers.
If you can't help, don't hinder. Don't make jokes about procedures that
could trash the user's setup — the poor sap might interpret these as
instructions.
Ask probing questions to elicit more details. If you're good at this, the
querent will learn something — and so might you. Try to turn the bad
question into a good one; remember we were all newbies once.
While just muttering RTFM is sometimes justified when replying to someone
who is just a lazy slob, a pointer to documentation (even if it's just a
suggestion to Google for a key phrase) is better.
If you're going to answer the question at all, give good value. Don't
suggest kludgy workarounds when somebody is using the wrong tool or
approach. Suggest good tools. Reframe the question.
Help your community learn from the question. When you field a good question,
ask yourself “How would the relevant documentation or FAQ have to change so
that nobody has to answer this again?” Then send a patch to the document
maintainer.
If you did research to answer the question, demonstrate your skills rather
than writing as though you pulled the answer out of your butt. Answering one
good question is like feeding a hungry person one meal, but teaching them
research skills by example is teaching them to grow food for a lifetime.
