This seems to be changing on sites like HN and Stack Overflow. The only difference I can see is that the moderators intentionally guide the discussion away from trolling. Are there other factors here that I'm missing?
I think the points systems on such sites give a different incentive. Many people help just to help, but others take part primarily for the point gaining (which rapidly becomes addictive) or to gain some sense of achieving more than others. Despite these motivations, if the ultimate result is a good one, I see no harm.
It was one of my ambitions to have a book published, so the primary motivation was achievement. My book has helped thousands of people learn to program, but if teaching were my primary motivation (it was certainly a secondary one), I'd have written and released it for free online (and even then the motivation might have more been fame and recognition than true philanthropy).
As it is, the second edition should be coming along next year, and I'm hoping to have the e-book version freely available for anyone to download. Primary reason? To promote the book and get people to buy the print version. That more people (who might not be able to afford the book) can learn is awesome, but that's a cool secondary goal :)
Sorry if this all sounds a bit dry, but I think it's how people truly think. I have good intentions, but they're usually for me (and my family) first, and then if other people benefit, awesome! This is why it's hard to make decisions based on other people's intentions if you don't consider how people really think. With few exceptions, we're all more selfish than we think (selfish in a good way, often).
Not to mention, writing a book gives you more credibility when you have to tell someone their operating system is an overpriced box of bugs, therefore assisting the ego in defeating the forces of cognitive dissonance that seem motivate people to defend their own positions.
I have to admit that I reliably fall for this one, particularly in one-on-one exchanges with friends or acquaintances. Perhaps the best reply would actually be, "yep, you're right, Linux/Lisp/Emacs does suck," but even just typing that now rubbed strongly against my natural evangelism.
A slightly less trollish alternative, which I attribute to Penny Arcade but can't easily source, is to post the wrong answer to a question. This prompts people to prove themselves smarter than you by providing the correct answer.
In the example I remember, it was related to finding quest details in World of Warcraft. If you ask in General chat "where is the foo?" you will be met with flames and rtfm-style responses, but if you say "the foo is in [wrong location]" out of the blue, you'll receive a cacophony of corrections.
When I first moved to the Bay Area, my roommate told me that the best way to find good places to eat and drink was to go onto a foodie forum like Chowhound and say something along the lines of "At [X], I had the best [Y] I've ever had!" because before you know it, you would have dozens of responses saying how wrong you were and among those responses, you'd find the best places to get [Y].
Is this trolling? Probably. But now I have an extensive list of great Bay Area eateries.
The RTFMan responses are one of the worst things in Linux culture. Man pages are an exhaustive reference about what you can do with commands, that's true. But they are not written in a helpful way: you pretty much have to read it all every time in order to see what you need. If Google had the same attitude with their search, they would be satisfied with a query for "george bush" that returns the page of some random George Bush out there, you would have to add "US president" to get what you need.
It's probably also self-reinforcing once it starts, because once a mailing list, IRC channel, etc. has a reputation of being populated by abrasive know-it-alls, new members have less of an incentive to bother being civil. Also, people mock-trolling to get useful answers is incredibly irritating to everyone else, which probably makes the overall attitude even less patient with newbie questions.
I don't know of a better way around this, either, but it reminds me of an offhand comment somebody made recently about how once cultural forces take a certain amount of bribery and corruption for granted, doing things honestly at all becomes much more difficult.
It's a technique very used by some bosses (that dont know shxt).
It's specially effective with young/big-ego !! developers. The modus operandi would be saying thay some work you did is crap. After that you provide a detailed report on the advantages of your work. And after that, he can tell his own boss what are the wonders he is acomplishing, all without reading a single line of the related documentation.
!! replace young/big-ego with any of these: ninja, guru, hacker, elvis, etc. :D
In my IRC days saying word "linux" aloud on #unix will get you kicked instantly no matter what you say about the OS. And yes, asking for obvious will get you kicked as well ;-)
