Chiming in with the general chorus, I think that RTFMs really are important. PerlMonks is not a help desk for your current crisis. It is a collection of people who like learning and teaching Perl. This means that often you will ask the question you think you want answered, but we will reply to the point we think people will learn most from.

Often a valid point to make is that you didn't need to ask the question, merely put in some elbow grease.

The subtext is that putting in elbow grease is how you make the transition from asking questions to being able to provide good answers. (Note: You typically can learn more from trying to answer questions well than you do from reading answers!) So it is a not so subtle way of encouraging people to become gurus themselves.

But all that said, very often when the answer is RTFM, it is best to not actually say RTFM. The reaction to the phrase "RTFM" is likely to be negative. If you can find a phrasing that says, "The answer you will get will be a pointer to existing discussion that you can yourself with standard search tools" without saying, "You twit! Why didn't you find that answer yourself?", that is more likely to be heard and acted on.

Sure, it might mean the same thing. But it is a useful social engineering point.