Quite often I see, here and other forums, someone chastise another for not doing a search before posting a question(as I have just done) and always wonder why. You do know that by reading the subject line you don’t have to read the post if it will upset you, right? And the post that led me to ask this had three pages of replies most of which were posted after the rude “Why didn’t you search first” reply. So just why is it so upsetting to you that someone would start another conversation about a subject?
Because they can!
Because I said so!
Does that sound familiar to you?
If so; well, then you can answer that question for yourself.
Its even more annoying when threads are started in the wrong forum. Reported.
Individual reactions are by definition individual. Doesn’t matter what one does, somebody somewhere will take exception. Some folks even get upset about damn near anything / everything.
In the case of GQs which are trivially Google-able IMO it goes like this:
We try to specialize in the hard ones, or the ones where the asker is looking for deeper insight from pros in the field. For example:
“What date was JFK assassinated” is a really lousy GQ even though the answer is 100% factual. “I read JFK’s autopsy report at <url> but don’t understand the part about … Can somebody explain this?” is a great GQ question.
We each hang out here for our own personal combination of entertainment / satisfaction. I for one am disinterested in spending a meaningful lump of my time to answer a question that the asker has demonstrated they’re not willing to spend a smidgen of time thinking about before asking.
The value in someone objecting to lazy questions by lazy questioners is that it upholds our community standards. The questioner either learns from his / her social error, or leaves in a huff. Either way our community is improved.
To be sure, it’d be better if folks were polite as they point this out. I’d rather have a newbie learn of, and then conform to, our community standards than to have them be gratuitously annoyed and simply leave for good after one post.
The slow learners or deliberately obtuse can be modded into compliance or oblivion over time.
I sometimes search on Google and can’t find the answer I’m looking for and someone here will tell me they searched, using some search term I hadn’t thought of, and low and behold the answer is right there.
So it’s a learning experience for me even though I have been searching for answers online for ages. I usually try and find the answer myself first since I pride myself on being able to find information for others. There have been scores of GQ questions I haven’t had to ask because I was able to find the answer myself.
Wow. Mods are jess moseyin’ along today…
Wonder where they’ll put this one. Probably ATMB, because the issue is brought up in stickies. But the “you” in the hed definitely is a Pit of All of Us about whom the OP is aggrieved.
ETA: Damn but Leo likes him his putting up his whiches.
LSLGuy covered it very well, and I agree with everything he said, so I’ll just provide a short explanation of how bad questions burden all readers.
In the 50+ topics shown in a default view, usually only a few will be of interest to the general reader*. Even if you read only the headline, that’s still a good amount of muck to sift through, and bad questions just add to it. It also consumes a small portion of each persons tolerance for annoying things, tolerance that could be better spent dealing with unintentional mistakes, and things you have no control over (e.g. traffic).
*The rest will be of interest to only a small handful of people each. But together, they cover a wide array of people, kind of like a rainbow.
Moved to ATMB.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
From the General Questions Rules:
Bolding mine. Others have given more detail on why we prefer you do a search before starting a thread.
We also prefer that you read the forum descriptions and forum rules before posting as well. 
So what do I get?
For making non-factual and irrelevant posts in GQ?:dubious:
I’ll note that the second and third posts in this thread were also against GQ rules and might have been mod-noted.
When I read the OP I thought they were referring to posters not having searched in the SMDB archives. And somebody quoted later
"Before opening a new thread, search the archives! "
I’ve never really had any luck with this. The search just returns too many irrelevant hits to make it worth going through. And the 2 minute (or whatever) requirement between searches makes it tedious.
(Yeah, I know, someone will now probably say that’s been covered in other threads.)
On the other hand many times a Google Search has answered a question and avoided my posting.
Now leading us to the recursive search of how to search the Straight Dope using Google.
“Questions are a burden to others; answers, a prison for oneself.”
Great username / post combo.
It always seemed like you were burdensome around here. 
When a poster has a lengthy history of turning every random thought in his head into a new thread without bothering to do a search on the subject first (and usually fails to respond to those who took the trouble to answer the question), then you/we/us gits cranky.
Nobody will be able to tell who I’m talking about here without doing a search.
Here’s a link to thread that OP started where he’s getting crap about not using the search engine.
It’s a 9/11 Truther thread.
To answer the OP here: You’re being told to use the search function because your thread is derivative sealioning at its worst. You have no useful new information or original questions. It’s all just a rehash of questions that were asked and answered a decade ago. Popping in to “just ask questions”, when by “ask,” you mean, “repeat questions you heard on some dodgy website” is unquestionably aggravating.
The reason you are being told to use the search function is because the answers to your rancid questions are all contained in threads we got bored with years ago. It’s the correct response. Deal with it.
It’s not even a matter of annoyance for me. I figure I’ll put as much time into answering the question as you put into writing it. If a thoughtless question can be found Google, then I will invest an equal amount of time/effort by telling you that the answer can be found on Google.
Discussion forums are a community, and a community works by everyone contributing.
That’s not the OP. Unless you know something I don’t?
The last thread started by the OP before this was from 9/3, and there is no complaining about searching first in it.