I don't find the RTFM reply as you got it to be very problematic. I think RTFM can be used as a way of stating with a few letters what you want to say in pointing someone in the direction of common information which they have been unable to find.

Suggesting information sources is better than just extracting the desired information because the person has to do some information processing on their own for the solution. This is a general attitude I think can be useful for newbies in particular, but also anyone else in need, that people need to be able to effectivly find information on their own without relying on gods to always provide the snippet desired.

Maybe people who learnt computers/programming originally in set lessons will feel differently than me. I'm pretty much fully self taught, from originally a university textbook on basic at the age of about 11ish, then some vb from tutorials, then a smidgen of C before I began perl from the the few chapters of Learning/Programming Perl I read while I had them temporarily. On the whole I find searching for or working out answers on my own more furfilling/enlightening than just asking and recieving RTFM or GRTN(go read this node). Possibly because of some experience in working things out myself I've gained from this I have never actually posted a question myself but always learnt from other peoples mistakes or mostly worked out things on my own. I find researching on other people's questions and projects such as what I put together for the jcwren programming challenge (It gave me an excuse to learn about HTML::Template and CSV) to give a kind of constant enlighenment.

Maybe that isn't neccessarily the right way to do it, but it's what i've done so far (and I suppose its worked, sorta :). Anyway, enough rambling.