I admit that I have, on occasion, called upon friends who are in the know for advice on how to do certain things. For example, here at work there is a man who knows a lot about computer hardware. Sometimes when we passed in the halls I’d tap him for tips on how to build my two boxes at home. And back when I was first learning how to register a web domain name I tapped a friend who had already done it. I think asking friends who know stuff, when done in moderation, is acceptable. If your friends don’t the have time to tell you how to do something, they are likely to tell you to buzz off and look it up for yourself. When it came to php and css and html, I pretty much learned all of it by studying people who already knew the tricks or by reading online tutorials or simply by futzing around with it until I figured it out (really, a lot of my php code was developed exactly that way).

I’m a member of a group populated mostly by professionals. About once a week, one professional in particular sends a message to the tune of, “I’m trying to get this to work, but it’s not working, so will you go look at it and tell me how to fix it, please?” Other people in the group go and look at it and then make cursory assessments in an attempt to help him out. Some even go to the trouble of passing along a handful of terrific links that tell him how to do it. And some will even give the answer outright, although nine times out of ten it doesn’t work because platform, purpose, or other nebulous reasons clash with the solution (read: he doesn’t understand it).

Today, this professional asked a question about why something wasn’t working. People answered him just as I outlined above - with some basic suggestions, links, and even snippets of code. Ten or so messages later, this professional chimed in again with, “Look, will someone just address my question here and tell me how to fix it?”

That’s when I stuffed him on my blocked-email list.