Such are the burdens of knowledge.

No one wants to say "no", but where we should expect a certain discipline from people who ask questions, people who answer them may have to exhibit some discipline as well.

How many have had to tell someone(privately), "you're about to cross a line between 'asking me HOW TO do your job' and 'asking me TO DO your job?'" Usually after having been asked the same question several times in a row, with little or no apparent progress between questions.

Any person who is "The Goto Person", "The One Who Knows X," or "The XYZ Guru," etc, will probably have this experience at somepoint in some form. Each person is going to have to draw their own lines and probably for each individual asking.

It's easy descend into the bad habit of answering questions that can be answered with a simple man page lookup, or browse through an index. A personal best was when someone asked the options to the "ls" command for a linux box he was sitting in front of.

In such situations we hope that at each question a person gains a little expertise of their own, and a little more savy and that over time the questions become fewer and stop altogether. In such cases offering answers that seem simple and burdensome to us are an investment.

For a system such as this, it's a very different situation. The person in question isn't asking just one person, he's asking everyone who checks on the post.

The problem comes when these simple questions drain the time and attention of the more experienced people who could be answering other questions. Again, it's a matter of individual tolerances, but now spread across more people.

One thing I've found effective is that when presented with a question that smacks of, "I didn't want to look it up myself so I'm asking you," is to ask "What have you found out so far?" Putting them on the spot to profer what effort of their own(if any) has been done so far.

A simple standard for here could be to avoid answering questions that don't include some text to the effect of, "I've looked it up in Programming Perl 3rd Edition, 2nd Edition Cookbook, Learning Perl, CGI, etc etc", or some other indication that they're not reaching for the Monk's robes first and their own brain cells second.

The bottom line should be that you don't want to turn someone away for whom a couple of quick answers might keep them from going off the wrong direction or get them rolling after being stalled on one issue. At the time time, you don't want to have someone take advantage of you either.