One of my pet peeves lately is people asking silly or unrelated questions to the wrong place, not because it makes sense, but because it’s easy and the questioner is lazy.

Let me give you a specific example; a self-proclamed “freelance writer” (using a Hotmail account and a GeoCities website, no less) sent in a posting to the Internet OTR Digest (a confirmed opt-IN mailing list devoted to discussing Old-Time Radio) asking how one could find a specific date given a month and week. Yes, of course, we call that a “perpetual calendar,” and ignoring the ancient plastic one in my desk drawer that can be “dialed” to any year and month, there are a bazillion of them sitting around on the Internet waiting to be used.

So, we have someone who you would assume (mistakenly, apparently) had some rudimentary research skills asking a non-sequeter question to thousands of people on an Internet discussion list. Why?

That’s simple; because out of the thousands, someone would know and tell him, and it would save him the trouble of having to actually expend the energy of looking it up himself. Ignore the plain truth that I am certain it took me less time to do a Google search than it took him literally to type in the question, he was still too lazy to bother doing it himself. (It also immediately calls into legitimate question anything he writes…if he is this painfully unskilled in research, how accurate can any of it be?)

I did what I routinely do when this happens; instead of allowing it to disrupt the conversation for the thousands of subscribers, I responded to it with a Google pointer directly to the answer, and my stock, “Seriously, learn to use Google” comment.

Of course, he did what many insecure people do when discovered doing something foolish; he turned it around and blamed me for being insensitive, even though I gave him the answer to his question instead of only pointing him to Google as I probably should have in retrospect (giving him a little fishing experience instead of handing him the d*mned filet). And that’s ok; I don’t think I’m going to lose any sleep tonight over him unsubscribing from the Internet OTR Digest in a fit of immature pique…truth is, I’m slowly getting to a zero-tolerance point, where the first time someone gives me a bunch of crap because they screw up, I set an ignore on their email address so I don’t waste any more time on them. (I don’t mind reasonable people who disagree with me, but I haven’t the time or the energy to get into a urination contest with every half-wit who gets snippy in place of being clever, either.)

But it did make me stop and think…do I pull this kind of nonsense? Do I ask other people questions I could easily answer myself? Am I this inconsiderate of others?

No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s certainly likely I’ve done some lazy things in my life, but by and large I like to be prepared before asking anyone a question. I’ve picked the brain of poor Fred Berney about MPEG compression more than once, and I’m sure to him the questions were simplistic, but I had researched the issue before talking to him about it, and tried to keep up with the material he pointed me to…I may not have been on his level, but I did try to prepare myself ahead of time.

Same with Jim Widner, with whom I am of late having a friendly disagreement regarding the whiz-bang nature of “podcasting.” Before shooting off my keyboard (in private email, I’m even more ascerbic than I am here, if you can believe it), I spend time researching various podcasting clients and their methodology, search for areas/websites with podcasts, and generally try to prepare myself with enough knowledge that I’m not a complete boob.

And when Katie asks me a question, I never say, “Ask your teacher tomorrow,” instead using, “I don’t know…let’s find out” as an excuse for her to climb into my lap in front of one of the machines in the house, where we hit Google and begin what can frequently turn into hours of exploration into the amazing world around us.

Nope, I have a whole lot of faults, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them. So I guess I can feel ok about getting annoyed when other people display it…