Read: It’s Time to Retire “RTFM” — Compassionate Coding
Also
Quote
When someone asks a question that I already answered in my docs, it doesn’t annoy me and make we want to go all RTFM on them. It actually makes me happy, because it means I wrote the right docs. Here’s a real world example of why that effort was worth doing - and all I have to do to help them is give them a link.
— The Seven Voyages Of Steve: “When someone asks a question t…” - Gamedev Mastodon
If you think that someone is “lazy” and is asking questions that require much more effort to answer than to ask, it’s often easier to just ignore them instead of saying “RTFM.”
Even if the answer is clearly in the documentation, it’s better to simply provide a link and say, “You can read more about it here,” rather than making a snarky remark. A lot of new people lack the search skills or even the necessary vocabulary to find answers, rather than the intention to do so.