Well, the alternative view is that maybe a lot of people come to this forum because they have little or no experience at all, are complete novices and don't know what to to search for, or haven't determined yet whether this site is something they want to be part of at all.
So when they test the water by asking for some guidance from the get-go, and then they get lambasted over the spit because 1) their googling skills don't meet some people's arbitrary standards 2) they don't know the Library by heart 3) they aren't K-Bike aficionados and aren't sure they want to be -- they might just say, "what do I need with a bunch of wannabe hard-ass, old-school, crotchety geezers who get a stiffie for beating people up -- f**k this, I'll go get me a new Versys and spend time riding rather than wrenching -- that's why I have a good job, i.e. to pay people to be mechanics."
I've found some people's attitude towards new posters here to be unnecessarily harsh and off-putting. I see no need to be disparaging towards people who come here asking questions. I see no advantage to scolding people for not searching 'adequately' to find the answer. I see no advantage to the community of using ROTF emojis to eviscerate noobs for asking questions, even if the answer could be found by searching the database. And IMO, if you can't provide information to people without slapping them on the wrists for asking, then maybe it's best not to jump all over every inquiry immediately and let some people give some advice that's not so admonitory.
When I first came here I didn't know jackshit and I'm sure I asked some dumbass questions. But I don't remember being treated with the kind of dismissiveness that reigns here these days. If I had, maybe I'd not still be here. It's not like we are flooded with people asking questions. Inquiries come in maybe 2 or 3 a day. I think some of us have become so accustomed to the volume of information on this site that we just kind of take it for granted. Well, it is a HUGE amount of information and is totally intimidating for new members. So telling them to search better and snapping at them is likely top do more harm than good.
I'd also like to remind you that any search here will turn up a number of different threads where people engage in all kinds of banter, and that reading through all these banter-saturated threads to get to the hard-core technical information can take a LOT of time. I'd also like to remind you that not all the technical information on this site is included in the Lieberry which hasn't been structurally updated to include all the new information in all the banter-saturatd threads for several years. So if someone shows up here and asks for a leg-up in cutting through all the old stuff to get to the most relevant, most up-to-date info, I think that's a reasonable request that deserves a courteous response.
In my opinion, we should be welcoming and supportive to new people who come here and should be willing to do a bit of hand-holding at the start of a new relationship. In my opinion we aren't here just as a source of information, but as a community of people who want to keep the classic K bikes on the road, and we should be willing to act more like ambassadors than disciplinarian schoolmasters.
BTW this isn't the first time this has come up. Every time it does, people get nice for a while then after a while it's back to smacking-hand-of-the-student-with-the-stick.
My humble $0.02.
