If the answer to a question is patently in the official, easy to find, obvious documentation, the question has little value because:

  • it is a basic question that 99% of visitors would already know
  • the answer is already published
  • any answer given would not stay as current as official documentation

So it should be closed, but the existing close reasons don't cover it. The most reasonable close reason would be a custom "...because the answer is available in official on-line documentation".

However this situation happens more often (in my experience) than some of the other pre-canned reasons.

What about adding a "the answer is available in official on-line documentation" to the menu?

Yes, I know it's already cluttered. I'd vote for removing some of the "other site" shortcuts and move them into the "other site" menu (one more click, big deal), leaving the front off-topic menu for custom reasons.

The close vote would require a link to said documentation. Like duplicates, 4 other people would need to agree to the link for the question to be closed. The post would be decorated with something like:

This question has already has an answer in online documentation here: http://example.com/docs/bar.html

Read the fantastic manual, you mean? It'd be a great idea but I doubt if people would use it. (Most would prefer to answer anyways.) –  devnull May 4 at 3:08
A close vote is too generous, just downvote. "This question does not show any research effort." –  A. Webb May 4 at 3:35
@devnull I think everybody would use it. For everything seemingly trivial. "That's probably online somewhere. Go away". –  Bart May 4 at 9:38
@Bart: ...which is the whole point. It would be fantastic. –  Denis de Bernardy May 4 at 9:46
If you're an absolute ass without any regard for how bad an experience that is for the OP involved and how rude that is for the outside observer @Denis, sure, fantastic. And of course it does nothing to add any information to SO either. So yeah, great. /sarcasm. –  Bart May 4 at 9:48
My "answer" is the linked feature-request: RTFM and also provide the reference link. This is only from flagger POV though. I don't know how reviewer will feel; having to open the link and ensure that it's correct, might be another issue. –  Andrew T. May 4 at 9:51
@Bart: SO is not a place where beginners should come to learn how to code by being spoonfed bits and pieces of docs. –  Denis de Bernardy May 4 at 10:00
@Denis which does however not imply that "oh, just go away" is the correct response. –  Bart May 4 at 10:01
@Bart and why should anybody care about being "rude" to someone who couldn't even bother to search before asking a (mostly low-quality) question here? Especially when "rude" means pointing them to existing material that covers their question? As Andrew said, a requirement to include a documentation link would be a very good idea. Sadly the close reason was dismissed after only being tested on the SciFi and English SE sites... which is stupid as both of these don't have many hard references and don't suffer from a huge stream of crap that requires such a close reason in the first place. –  l4mpi May 4 at 10:02
You don't end up just being rude to the OP @l4mpi. That's not the only person you're interacting with. You're also painting a picture for the wider audience. An atmosphere of "just go away" is negative and poisonous. You might get some pats on the back from your fellow curmudgeons and pride yourself in "keeping the site clean" and somehow "sticking it to the idiots", but it's an overall negative image. You can provide similar information in a far more informative, and positive or neutral manner. Andrew's idea, I agree, is far better. As is the link provided by BoltClock. –  Bart May 4 at 10:07
@Bart you still fail to show how exactly this would be rude. If the close reason literally said wtf n00b, RTFM, that would be rude. But how is something like This is covered in the official docs [here] rude? –  l4mpi May 4 at 10:09
There's lots of documentation that requires explanation. So this would have to be used with extreme care. And I don't think users can, in general, be trusted to do so. –  Cody Gray May 4 at 12:11
One thing I will say is that when I have a question about the documentation, the first thing I do is Google it. And as frequently as not, some inexperienced programmer asked that question on StackOverflow a few years ago and received a still-relevant answer. Usually, these answers are good enough that I can skip going to the official documentation altogether, saving me quite a bit of time. –  Kevin May 5 at 2:18
RTFM is an asshole answer. This is not an asshole site. –  Bailey S May 9 at 16:54

19 Answers 19

While you may have seen hundreds (or thousands) of questions that fit this category (and I feel your pain about it), there are a few reasons why we shouldn't have that close reason:

  • we have a policy against LMGTFY links either as comments or answers. The reasons you've specified for having a RTFM reason are very similar or the same to the reasons why people left LMGTFY links.

  • it might be a basic question, but that in itself is no reason to prevent having it asked and answered on Stack Overflow. Subsequent questions about the same thing should be duplicate linked to the original question/answer.

  • frequently the basic question could be asked and answered in a way that isn't represented in the official online documentation. For example we still see questions asking the difference between pre and post incrementation, one of the more basic topics, but people are still confused about it despite the numerous articles out there.

  • a RTFM close reason will be used as the lazy man's close reason (much like the old not constructive close reason was) when in fact the question can be answered and/or duplicate linked.


A couple of new angles on this have occurred to me and they should be noted here as well. (Keep in mind that at no stage am I advocating that we allow lazy or junk questions - these are well discussed in the past. This is purely about "RTFM" as a close reason).

Remember all the recent moderator candidates who promised to "help the newbies because we're too harsh on them"? They were making that promise because there is a perceived problem, users are already finding the bar to active participation quite high. Introducing a RTFM close reason will help undo any progress in that area.

Do you doubt what I'm saying? Take a trip back to Usenet days, where "RTFM you n00b!" was the standard answer for any new user. That made Usenet a scary and challenging place for newbies, you had to have massive persistence to be able to stick around and eventually earn the right to issue the statement to newbies yourself.

If the RTFM close reason was introduced here, who is going to police it? Who is going to make sure that it isn't getting out of control? Who is going to answer all the Meta questions from discouraged users who had a question closed for it? Who is going to check the target documentation and make sure it is clear enough and of sufficient quality that every newbie (of any culture, including non-English speaking) should be able to understand it?

Question: what is the difference between a newbie asking a question that's covered by the documentation and an experienced user asking a more technical question that is also covered by the documentation?

Answer: there is absolutely no difference. Yet we have no issues with creating a good answer for those experienced user's questions, pointing them to the relevant documentation as a reference, and then filling in the gaps for them. Why can't we do the same for newbies?

"but people are still confused about it despite the numerous articles out there" because they cannot be bothered to locate or read them. FTFY. –  Denis de Bernardy May 4 at 9:28
+1 for your last point: the "RTFM" close reason will be abused for any question which is remotely "easy" –  Matt May 4 at 9:29
@Matt: And what? They'll then get closed as they should be. –  Denis de Bernardy May 4 at 9:30
@Denis: which is where we disagree. An answer becomes "easy"/"simple" once you've solved the problem yourself. To the beginner though, it's still a hard problem to solve. "RTFM" will end up being used as close reasons for questions which, whilst not complex, are not actually in the documentation. Show your hatred for these questions by downvoting and moving on, not by VtC. –  Matt May 4 at 9:34
@Matt: if someone's "hard" problem is a simple google or doc away from getting fixed, I very seriously question the idea that they should be programming to begin with. –  Denis de Bernardy May 4 at 10:06
A (suitable) LMGTFY link is actually a better answer than many answers I see, as it "teaches a man to fish". Bohemian's proposal now includes the requirement to link to the original documentation: on that basis it gets parity with SO's existing "duplicate of..." close reason, and would serve over time to improve the standard of questions which those users would be likely to leave in future. –  ClickRick May 4 at 18:30
Let's not forget all the manuals that are opaque or downright wrong. –  Warren Dew May 4 at 21:25
@ClickRick There is nothing stopping people from leaving a link to the doco now. If you've ever spent time in newsgroups you would have seen the hurdle that RTFM answers produce - they can downright alienate new users. –  slugster May 4 at 22:56
I think I should mention that some easy questions covered by documentation can be hard to search for. Pre-incrementation/post-incrementation is a good example of that—if you only know the ++ symbol, and not the words that relate to its use in C relatives, you may find it rather hard to find what you seek. –  dfeuer May 5 at 3:24
One issue I have is an RTFM answer is effectively plagiarism of the official doc, so our attribution standards require a link... to the doc. And thrre's the rub. And further we are not adding value with such an answer - we are just a cache of the doc. Answers requiring explanation of doc (eg some subtle point) I am fine with, because we're adding value. –  Bohemian May 6 at 23:23
@Slugster I think you nailed it. Other than that there's just that big huge difference between the way the world ought to be and the way it is. –  Dave Kaye May 7 at 21:49
I keep hearing that the bar to entry is too high, but I also see lots of questions that show little to no attempt at research. There have literally been questions where the exact text of the question yields the correct answer in google, as the first hit. So however high the bar to participation is at SO, it is apparently comparable with googling. That strikes me as too low, not too high. –  yshavit May 8 at 16:23
My least favorite LMGTFY answers are the ones that are the first result on Google for the question I've searched for. –  Gabriel May 8 at 17:43
Can we just have an angry face button that shows the question as closed just for the person who clicked it and for everyone else just shows up as downvote. –  Amicable May 9 at 8:21
That's exemplary answer that address imaginary Stack Overflow site. –  Your Common Sense May 9 at 11:45

One aspect not considered by the question or other answers is, the mere existence of an official manual or canonical answer does not mean that everyone looking at it would be able to comprehend and use it in its current form. Official documentation can often be overwhelming to me as a newbie, I simply do not know where to start or what to look for. It might assume prior knowledge or other context that I may not have.

Therefore, there is a lot of value in answers which not only link to the doc, but pinpoint the correct location, as well as clarify assumptions and expand on the (often terse) prose of the doc.

I agree to some extent with that. Oh look, I just found that in an Advanced Javascript book ... it must be RTFM! –  demongolem May 6 at 20:56
This. man rsync without ever having typed rsync can be completely overwhelming. Searching for tutorials can help but I think a lot of us forget that we at one point learned the sort of thing (incantations) to type into Google in the first place in order to get decent results. If you don't understand that you have a syntax error in a JavaScript line Googling 'foo is not an object' (the error the browser gave you) is pretty much useless. –  Will May 8 at 18:30
You're right; technical documentation is often aimed at experts, not n00bs. Even being an expert in one field may not help you in a similar field. Being a SQL Server expert doesn't buy you much in trying to understand Oracle; a C expert won't understand basic C++ jargon. –  Gabe May 9 at 12:37
I'm always nervous about "everyone looking at it would be able to comprehend and use it". If official documentation, dozens or hundreds of previously existing answers, uncountably many links around the internet and who knows how many books, etc., already exist, what makes us think that adding another new answer will make a difference? It's necessary to review what already exists in order to guess what alternative phrasing might make a difference for each new question. –  user2338816 May 12 at 1:44
yes, the prototypical usenet question of yesteryear would be "how do I use man", with the prototypical 'answer' of "RTFM" (meaning there, read the f'in man page, iow issue man man). An answer so utterly useless and insulting it's worse than the question. –  jwenting May 13 at 10:56
When someone asks a question that is easily answered by consulting, say, the Java API spec or the iOS Developer Library pages, they either were too lazy to look there, or were too dumb to know how to find and bookmark basic documentation before beginning on their project to write The Next Great Viral App. I'm sorry, but either way they are not programmer material. –  Hot Licks May 16 at 23:17
True... But then you have questions like Is there a “not equal” operator in Python? –  Basic Jun 2 at 23:05


This is effectively the "link-only answer" version of Close as Duplicate. Just as hard to use as the latter, but with more randomly-broken links in harder-to-edit places.

The solution to the underlying problem is to make close-as-duplicate faster and easier to use - then encourage folks to beef up the answers being pointed to rather than re-answering the same damn questions every day.

Which is a hard enough problem all on its own.

See also:

Amen! This really IS a "General Reference" close reason; renamed... and as a regular user on a site where G.R. close reason was tried and failed miserably, I can fully confirm that it's a Bad Idea. –  DVK May 13 at 10:34

Disagree for now. But I'll reverse my position and support it the day the documentation for all websites on the Internet are:

  • community editable
  • kept up to date
  • don't break links for the sake of laziness and/or whimsy

The "official" documentation for APIs and software appears to be done by people who care less about their high-traffic URIs than I do about a link visited by perhaps five people a year. They have no adherence to "cool URIs don't change".

For instance: the Qt library has what most think to be exemplary documentation. Yet breaking link after link with each time it's passed on. trolltech.com croaks, then it's at nokia.com for a while, then it's at qtproject.org and echoed at digia.com here and there.

(Apparently no one was willing to pay for and negotiate the $12/yr and $5/mo for a redirecting server as the hot potato jump'd about...)

That's an example from people whose link structure is pretty sane and easy, and are mostly known for making good documentation. Compare it to MSDN or other insanity, where the URL looks like a Google Map link or Amazon product profile. For all we know those numbers contain some kind of viral code--not that most people feel like analyzing it. :-/ But I think it's enough to say the links suck and they break.

So if someone asks an unanswerable question, put it "on hold" it because it's not clear or good. If it's a duplicate question, put it "on hold" because it's a duplicate.

BUT if it's answerable and no one has asked it yet, let it be. Ideally probe to flesh it out so the person asking gives it more dimensionality; which might help bring it up in more relevant searches. Then give good, sage answers, and close future duplicates of that question that offer no new nuances.

Be better than the documentation, and outlive it--which isn't hard. Because given current practices on the Interweb: being better than the documentation is doing battle with an unarmed opponent.

Just for reference, not all language documentation (Java and Python, especially) have fairly stable documentation access by URL and thus RTFM closure may be appropriate for those tags. –  hexafraction May 8 at 17:57
Basic Java and iOS/Objective-C documentation is quite stable. Just because some documentation is hard to find does not mean that a poster is absolved from the responsibility to TRY to find something. –  Hot Licks May 16 at 23:19
@HotLicks If you are not inclined, don't answer. Downvote if you think the question sucks. But when the M in RTFM that you really mean GTFM (Google-the-freaking-manual) is dependent on G and M then I think it's a lousy close reason. I don't trust G or M, or when you come down to it SE either, but that's why redundancy is good. And at least here there's some hope for improvement over time. –  HostileFork May 16 at 23:25

We had such a close reason. It was something along the line of "the user must demonstrate a minimal understanding about the topic discussed". Which is more politically correct... since the true meaning of the F in RTFM is not "friendly", but rather the F word.

This was a good close reason which was most suitable for a lot of crap questions. Particularly code begging. Whatever you might think of the "minimal understanding" close reason, the true story is all the crap questions that sort under that category are still closed today.

Sometimes they are closed as duplicates, but more often they are closed as something that doesn't make any sense, such as "unclear what you are asking" or "the question lacks details". Since "minimal understanding" was removed as close reason, I've also seen an increase in weird, custom-made close reasons like "no research", "the user lacks knowledge" etc. They are often on the border to rude.

I think that bringing back the "minimal understanding" close reason would solve a lot of problems. I never understood why it was removed in the first place. This is not a site for homework questions nor is it a beginner programming tutorial site.


I just found the minimal understanding close reason again! We were just silly, it was never gone, just hidden. On the holiest of SO pages, "What topics can I ask about here?", we can read:


Everyone shall follow the SO main policy page. Therefore we should close all such posts. This is how you do it:

  • Click "close" for the off-topic question meeting the criteria.
  • Click "off-topic because...".
  • Click "Other".
  • Paste the below text:

The question appears to be off-topic, because questions asking for code must demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic

It would be better if there was a pre-made close reason for this, but until there is, we can use the above method.

Bring. Back. The. RTFM. Close. Reason. Now. –  Isaac May 20 at 5:44
@Isaac It was never gone, apparently. See edit above. –  Lundin May 22 at 14:43
That particular reason was intended to be used for "give me a fish" questions - or "code begging", as you named it. "Here's a list of requirements <no question follows>" / "here's my assignment <that's a very nice assignment, did you wish for us to admire it?>" / etc. It was removed because folks were using it for any and all questions they considered "too basic", in some cases going back and closing canonical questions because they didn't include a code dump. That was... counter-productive. –  Shog9 May 22 at 15:17
@Shog9 People used it for those reasons because such questions aren't desired by the community. SO is not a beginner tutorial. Removing the close option changed nothing, you'll still see these very same questions closed today, just with very strange close reasons, when no duplicate was easily found. –  Lundin May 27 at 11:48
This is what makes writing specific descriptions for close reasons so tricky, @Lundin: ideally, we want to capture the intent of the folks closing, but there's always the side-effect of folks misunderstanding the description and thinking an entirely new class of questions has suddenly become disallowed. Note that "beginner" is relative; I've watched many experienced C++ programmers brought low when faced with a new API; heck, even finding the relevant documentation in MSDN can be a challenge, interpreting it properly is a minefield. –  Shog9 May 27 at 15:04

However desirable this would be to keep this site clean, the sorry truth is that junk is very welcome on it.

Over the years, we've banned LMGTFY links and removed all of the potential close reasons that even remotely suggested OPs to get lost and help themselves before asking.

The reasoning behind this is adequately expressed by @slugster: "it might be a basic question, but that in itself is no reason to prevent having it asked and answered on StackOverflow".

Translation: Junk welcome; traffic is king.

This isn't something everyone agrees with, but that's the way it is.

The only option we've left when we don't is to downvote, and I do not imagine this will change.

Yes, that is it: Junk welcome; traffic is king. Noone would admit it, though. –  devnull May 4 at 10:28
You seem to be equating basic questions with junk questions. They are not the same and I never implied that they were, that translation is totally incorrect. There are already mechanisms to get rid of junk. –  slugster May 4 at 10:47
@slugster, the vast majority of basic questions have already been answered. Sometimes very well, often early on in the site, often with lots of upvotes, often showing up in the list of possible dupes that you get when posting a question. Every basic question closed as a dupe is a junk question. –  Charles May 4 at 16:39
I concur, just having traffic does not result in a good Q&A platform, see on Quora, they basically accept any junk you throw at it, does not enhance the experience at all, since the S/R ratio is reduced dramatically –  Sebastian Godelet May 4 at 19:35
@Charles: For those junk questions, we don't need a new rtfm close reason if they can be closed as duplicates. Slugster is referring to the (minority of) good, basic questions. –  Bergi May 4 at 21:07
@Denis you seem to suffer from a common SO problem. "If everyone thought just like I do, this site would be so much cleaner". Communication is really hard. A lot harder than programming. Kudos to you for thoroughly combing through all the rules and culture of SO before participating. The truth is most people see a Q/A site and they think it reasonable to put their question there. So they post their question it gets downvoted and closed with no clear explanation. So what does this result in. They come back and try again not having learned anything from the previous attempt. –  nsfyn55 May 8 at 18:31
This answer is so true it hurts. Duplicates may be junk, but simple RTFM questions, like syntax of a statement also fall in that category, I think. –  GolezTrol Jul 14 at 20:47

The problem with RTFM is that the solution to a particular problem may seem obvious to one by reading the doc, but not to another.

Example (not an actual example):

How do I set text to a TextView in android


RTFM, TextView.setText

Seems trivial to anyone with a minimal background in android

A bit more complex

Why doesn't my db.rawQuery(TABLE, 'name = toto', null) work

Is quite trivial to anyone who is familiar with SQL (toto would be considered a column, raising an explicit exception)

And so one. Anyone (almost) would agree to close the first as RTFM (although it should actually be marked as duplicate since there has to be a duplicate of this)

The problem is Where do you draw the line between trivial and easy for me, but not to the RTFM point?

Pretty much where you draw it, IMO. Can the question be answered in full by doing a trivial Google search? It's a RTFM question. Can it not? It's not. –  Pekka 웃 May 11 at 4:42
A lot of trivial Google searches answer the question in full because one of the first results is the answer on SO. –  jwg May 14 at 13:20
@jwg What's your point? Why does that have any effect on the process Pekka described? –  Servy May 21 at 18:14

I'm a software developer that uses a couple different languages at once, so quite a bit of the time I'm just looking for a specific syntax of a statement. I know that X language should be able to do Y but how exactly to do it is up in the air. Yes, most languages have online documentation but it doesn't exactly follow any kind of convention. MSDN is different than Java docs which is different than Python. (Java docs are probably the best IMO.) Then there are version changes, etc. which further complicate the issue.

Using a search engine like Google in combination with online forums (mostly SO), I can get the answers quickly. When I am learning a new language or getting back into a language that I haven't used for a while this is the easiest way for me to do it and I can do it while I'm building whatever it is I'm working on.

Languages, frameworks and other tools are moving all the time so this knowledge is typically transient anyway. Yes, you should know the underlying concepts. Hopefully you've learned those already.

If you believe that holding all the syntax in your head of all the languages you are using right now is an essential skill of a programmer and anyone who can't do that should find a different vocation then these low level, basic questions have no place. Otherwise it is a handy, point to point reference tool that is easily accessible to outside search engines.

"I know that X language should be able to do Y but how exactly to do it is up in the air". Ok, but what did you try? If you didn't try anything, then your question isn't very good. –  John Saunders May 6 at 0:27
@JohnSaunders - I don't ask the questions. I benefit from some other person asking a 'stupid' question. Typically SO gives more pointed advice than the docs. In particular, the Python docs are adequate but they're unconventional and have all sorts of compatibility issues across versions. Also, something like Beautiful Soup is much easier to get answers on SO than from the documentation which is pretty sparse. –  GenericJam May 6 at 9:48
@JohnSaunders - I'm essentially saying 'RTFM' is not a valid response. Just because it is documented somewhere doesn't mean it shouldn't be on SO as well. If it is a duplicate, point to the original question or just ignore it. The search tools are there to help filter the garbage. –  GenericJam May 6 at 9:53
RTFM "first" is a perfectly valid response. If one reads the manual and it is then not sufficient, then there is the basis of a question. What I dislike is questions where there are perfectly adequate docs that the OP either didn't know about, or didn't bother to read. In either of those cases, directing the OP to the documentation is appropriate. If the documentation in not adequate, then it is not appropriate to direct the OP to it. –  John Saunders May 6 at 10:01

As someone who has encountered my fair share of RTMFers I can attest that almost every question can be answered by reading the appropriate documentation. But often that documentation is cryptic, poorly organized, or commonly misunderstood. This alone is enough to think twice about adding this as a reason. But it seems that almost all questions already fall neatly into the existing categories. When a person asks a question either you can provide a succinct answer(in which case you answer it), the answer already exists on SO(which makes it a duplicate), or the question isn't appropriate for SO(it gets closed for one of the plethora of reasons in the close dialogue).

But very often it is not. And the two most common questions for iOS/Objective-C programming are [SomeClass someMethod] Unrecognized selector, and "I tried to parse a date into NSDate and got a nil", both of which, if Googled will come up with hundreds of references. Not suppressing these duplicates, in fact, makes Google less effective since one is more likely to hit one of the dupes that has, out of sheer fatigue, been allowed to languish without marking a dupe. –  Hot Licks May 16 at 23:25
I'm not sure I understand your concern. SO provides a close reason for "Duplicate" –  nsfyn55 May 18 at 3:42
But I don't think we should each have keep a set of bookmarks to all the common dupes. The SO search is so poor that finding a "good" dupe (especially given all of yesterday's dupe-dupes) will likely take 5 minutes. With roughly a dozen (that I read) of these low-quality, poorly-researched questions coming through daily, that's an hour of my time. Very few people are going to spend that much time on this, so they just down-vote, or they select a close code at random. –  Hot Licks May 18 at 12:15
If you can't find a good duplicate easily how do you expect the OP to? –  nsfyn55 May 19 at 3:30
One of the reasons why I can't find good examples is that I trip over all the stupid dupes. And the onus should be on the OP to do more work than you or I would have to do to find the info. –  Hot Licks May 19 at 3:36
Its tricky, my primary reason for speaking out against the RTFM I think it will be abused. Take for instance this question stackoverflow.com/questions/927358/…. This problem is clearly documented in the reference material. Would 5 experts be wrong if they closed it? Disclosure, the first time I needed to undo a commit this is where I found my answer. Disclosure again, git's man pages are notoriously difficult to decipher. –  nsfyn55 May 19 at 14:20
Like any of the closing codes, an RTFM code could be abused. If you exclude closing reasons that can be abused we would never close anything. Git is particularly inscrutable, and the documentation is quite fragmented and poorly organized -- you can only really understand the documentation if you know Git well enough that you don't need it, so folks have a pretty valid excuse for asking for help. Others, like the functions of Java's String, are easy to understand and readily accessible and "obvious" -- there's no real excuse for not consulting them. –  Hot Licks May 19 at 15:13
I hear ya, but additionally its a philosophical problem. This is a question/answer site. Its stated goal is to '...build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming....'. This leads one to believe that it includes questions about programming covered in the documentation. A duplicate close vote is in line with this goal because it says "An answer to this already exists on SO" an RTFM is not because it says "An answer to this exists elsewhere". If you accept RTFM as a reason to close a question then you find yourself in direct conflict with the stated goal of the site. –  nsfyn55 May 19 at 16:02
Except that dupe and RTFM are basically saying the same thing -- the answer is available elsewhere (and likely a reasonable effort on the part of the OP would have found it). –  Hot Licks May 19 at 16:46
If they are the same thing then there is no need for another option. So far all I have heard is that finding a duplicate is too much trouble. Thats exactly why the RTFM option shouldn't exist(see above treatments on the "lazy man's duplicate" option). Either its answered on SO or its not. If its not it should be left open and if it is you need to provide the duplicate. Its not good enough to say "its probably answered on SO somewhere" –  nsfyn55 May 19 at 17:31

Another slightly off-topic answer: Rather than closing codes and downvotes, what if there were an "automaton" that read questions (maybe just those from new posters or posters with low reps) and "gently guided" those that were clearly dupes or of poor quality.

Eg, it might say: unrecognized selector is a common iOS exception and has many answers already. Examine the list below, and if you do not find your answer you may post this question.

(And then somehow require evidence that the poster at least skimmed through the references, eg.)

It would, of course, require some sort of natural language and AI "stuff" (which I'm not volunteering to write), and would not handle every situation. But I suspect it could be made to work for a subset of the problem questions.

Added: And companion feature would be to allow people to somehow nominate and vote for the "best dupes" for common questions -- versions of the questions that were well-presented and which had suitably instructive and enlightening answers. Or perhaps have some sort of "wiki" of "standard answers" for the common dupes.


I generally agree to the whole “Read The Fine Manual…” concept, but for one thing: Most people do not know that a manual even exists. And you’d be shocked how many people using Unix/Linux-based systems—Mac OS X, Ubuntu, etc…—have 100% no clue that the man command exists.

When people look at my desk & see little to no books on the work I do they wonder where I get the info. I show them how to just type, man grep and their jaws drop.

The issue is—at least in the Unix/Linux world—that while the command line is where most of the work is done, few people truly realize what a rich learning tool they have right on their desktop.

Now RTFM back in 1991… Anyone doing this kind of work knew exactly what that meant then!

and most of the manuals are far from fine... I've seen a lot of "manuals" that were utterly wrong, impossibly indexed, and/or lacking even basic information. Yet it's "the manual" and there's a few lines in it no doubt that to a domain expert with 10 years experience working with the product brings back enough memories of the issue at hand that for him it contains the answer... –  jwenting May 13 at 10:59
@jwenting Yes, most manuals are not fine. But at least make an effort to read up on the subject & formulate an educated answer rather than those posts where people basically star by saying “I am a noob!” and ends with them saying “Somebody please help me! Thanks so much!” Really, minimal effort is all that is asked. –  JakeGould May 14 at 15:18
Any competent programmer should know that the first step to take when approaching an unfamiliar technology is to identify (and bookmark) the available documentation. Yes, one may not find "the right stuff" immediately, and some stuff (more and more, sadly) is poorly documented at best, but there is a lot of pretty good documentation out there that folks never make an attempt to consult. Of course, a big part of the problem is that SO is catering more and more to "programmers" who are not even marginally competent. –  Hot Licks May 17 at 1:59

Kind of off-topic, but another gripe is the "I tried this and it doesn't work" question. OK, you ran the code (which may or may not be listed to any degree of consistency), but you don't specify what the inputs are, you don't specify what outputs you got, you don't list the exception ("it crashed"), you don't identify the failing line, and you've (apparently) made no effort to debug.

And asking for any of the above information gets responses like "I sent in a glibnix request", "the output was bad", "the exception was <non-existent exception name>", etc. Even repeated requests in bold get no response other than "tell me what's wrong", or "I tried and it didn't work"..


The fact that something is covered in official documentation or general reference is not sufficient reason to close a question. Some good points in support of this have already been brought up in other answers (e.g. the docs or "general reference" may not be as grokkable as an answer provided by SO; there may be subtle nuances that are better addressed by a custom answer on SO; RTFM-style responses are newbie-hostile; etc.).

What I haven't seen yet in the answers so far is that one of Stack Overflow's goals (I believe[1]) is to become the de facto canonical repository of programming knowledge. In other words, within SO's domain, SO aims to ultimately encompass and supersede all other sources. It doesn't do this by being "Link Central" but by having the actual content. Sure, people are going to use Google, but the ambition is for the most relevant SO question to be the top hit in any given programming-related Google search.

[1]Credit/blame where it's due: I didn't just come up with these ideas myself. I could have sworn I read them in a blog or other meta post, perhaps by one of the SO founders. If not a founder, then most likely some extremely well-respected user from SO or English Language & Usage.

That's a terrible goal, IMO. Stack Overflow shouldn't replace the world's manuals. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/160565/… –  Pekka 웃 May 11 at 4:44
You are exactly right John Y, that was one of the explicit goals of the site and why simple questions are allowed. –  Lance Roberts May 14 at 14:21
If that is a goal, it seems to me that there should be a subsidiary goal to prevent/remove questions that have no value. –  Hot Licks May 16 at 23:32

The answer to this question is clearly expressed in the documentation for Stack Overflow. Perhaps some wise one who doesn't like people asking questions could close it, in order to keep the site pure?

"The close vote would require a link to said documentation" Where's your link? (I'll add that this proposal, or something very like it, has been made before.) –  Josh Caswell May 14 at 17:39

There's nothing wrong with simple questions

The only thing that is "wrong" is that QA software (such the SO commercial enterprise),

does not technically address the issue of duplicates.

It's just that simple. Everything else is pissing in the wind.

QA software does not technically address the issue of duplicates.

It's staggeringly, childishly, risibly, bucolically, obvious that this is the next development in QA software.

There should be a "technological" solution to duplicates, or near-duplicates.

I picture something among the lines .. all dupes / near-dupes should just stack up as a huge amount of text ... comment-like ... which people can wade through. Humans (see: psychological studies: humans) are staggeringly good at wading through large volumes of text, so there's no problem there.

Idiots, wait I mean to say users, with high!!!!! points!!!!! could be allowed to associate one Q to another.

{This would provide thrills! for anyone still stuck in the 1930s, trying to "generate! points! on SO!". (Because it's kool! to have High! Points!)

Since the busy-body-class on the internet is bigger than a VEKA-class transport vessel, it would only take a couple days fro a commercial enterprise like SO to have its, uh, users make a huge amount of value for it, by aligning all.

None of this is going to happen, obviously, since SO is now a Western-democracy-like "USMO" (Ultra-Slow-Moving-Organisation).

Everything else on this page is complete crap. Blether about how to socially manipulate newbie idiots, how to socially manipulate the high! point! class, etc etc.


tl;dr: No RTFM tag. Instead another (friendlier) tag or message which would tell about the duplicateness and provide some direction.

When you search for RTFM as a civilian, you will find Read the f***g manual, which is, as is, unhelpful, arrogant, ivory tower b.s. that is hostile and ignorant to every newcomer because to them it means "Get off my lawn, this ground is for the elite only. F** you and go away, please.".

And this is not even my own opinion, rather I got told this opinion a few months ago by an experienced and well-traveled electrical engineer in my family, who knows more about life and different culture than most of us (including you, you, you, and especially you as well as myself). He was looking for advice on a program he was trying to write, but found only arrogant, hostile and ignorant RTFM answers (and has not even posted himself). Since then, he understandably avoids OUR ELITIST A*HOLE COMMUNITY altogether.

Everybody voting pro RTFM closing: Thanks. It's your fault he sees us exactly like we are (I repeat myself, but): arrogant, ignorant, hostile. AIH!

You can answer every question on the world either with RTFM, Ask your vendor or the latter's younger brother Look into the sourcecode except those not solved by science, yet.. Even questions not solved by science can be solved by RTFM (it might only depend on relativity and quantum mechanics).

If you don't consider a question as RTFM-answerable, than it's because you are not elite enough, yet. In reality, it is f**ing RTFM-ible, you are just too low to realize the sprouts of the docs.

And, pre-finally: If you vote for a RTFM-closing, then you should better be immediately able to define where the boundaries between RTFM and non-RTFM questions are. Does it stop when a question cannot be solved with a verbatim snippet from the f**ing manual? Or where does it?

I am guilty myself, yet I'd like to advertise more humility in our community. Let's become a community other communities like, and let us respect the other communities. Let us become guides to them, and once upon a time they may become our guides.

To clarify: nobody is talking about actually using the literal phrase "RTFM". As to where the boundaries lie: if Googling a question's title leads to a perfect answer (like when my question is "how do I do {very simple thing}?" and first hit is a manual page saying functionname() - does {very simple thing} then that to me is an RTFM question. There are way too many of those and they're a sign you didn't even do a simple Google search. If that is somehow elitist, then colour me so. (But - what you describe is the reason why this has never been implemented as a close reason) –  Pekka 웃 May 14 at 7:59
@Pekka웃: Of course I am also exaggerating a little bit w.r.t. the language used. However, in times where google results differ for any person, even that boundary seems fragile. A newbie might have had a history of googling for C++, C# or for example other languages with funny characters in their name. Then someone might not even use google. For myself, I regularly fail to search for C++ jobs on certain job-sites, and find driving license C jobs instead. All in all, I discover that whenever I enter a new topic, I often fail on "RTFM-questions", and then would be thankful for real adivce ... –  phresnel May 14 at 8:39
... e.g. "You may want to use the search like this or that. For you, we have [this](url) answer." –  phresnel May 14 at 8:40
If people aren't coming here to ask questions simply because they're unwilling/unable to run their question through google first, and such unresearched questions are not well received, then I consider that a great thing. We don't want people who are only going to ask those types of questions. We don't want people who are going to be answering those types of questions (because it encourages undesirable behavior). SO is explicitly not meant to be a place for everyone. If you don't want to do research before asking a question, you're not part of the target audience. –  Servy May 20 at 15:02
@Servy: Perfect example for my post, especially the part stating "ivory tower". Why exactly do we not want those people? Why don't we invite ppl rather than chill them away for-basically-ever? The guy I am talking about would have been an awesome addition to our community, coming from an orthogonal background, having deep philosophical knowledge, tec-knowledge, etc., after learning the basic usage of Stack Overflow; everyone commits to errors at some point, even and especially you and myself, @Servy! But the mentioned guy has finished with us already, so thanks a lot. –  phresnel May 20 at 17:57
@phresnel Because going out of your way to welcome low quality content, and to refuse to remove low quality content drives away experts. People who want others to do their work for them love it when people do their work for them. Subject experts looking to spend some time answering questions don't love it when they see nothing but questions people couldn't bother to put into Google. Virtually all of SO's competition does what you suggest, and allows most everything. SO decided to set a standard, so everyone came here. The standards are the reason for its success. –  Servy May 20 at 18:16
@Servy: My opinion is explicitly not to do their homework, but to show them how they can find the solution. I am even open to removing answers to dupe or low quality questions. You missed my point entirely ... –  phresnel May 22 at 5:01
@phresnel You'll find that the vast majority of the people asking those types of questions have no interest in actually learning. They want an answer, generally code that they can copy/paste. Nothing else. Spending time trying to teach them something is time wasted, as they won't bother doing anything with that since it's not an answer they can copy/paste. Beyond that, the community simply doesn't have enough energy to try to teach every single user that isn't willing to put any effort into trying to solve their own problem. There are too many of them, and too few contributors. –  Servy May 22 at 13:45
How do you know that the vast majority does not just return months later, in a matured condition? There cannot exist statistics on that. If given the choices RTFM(/however)-Tag, I consider just staying with duping questions is more productive for US and THEM in the longer term. From own experience, duping in the majority of cases is almost the same effort as tagging. If users don't show progress, we can start thinking on sanctioning them. –  phresnel May 23 at 6:28

Generally you don't need entire page to answer a question. Why don't you provide a link in answer instead and quote a relevant excerpt from the documentation page?

Oleg - your foolish answer does not address the critical issue, how to make more points for the points crowd. I guess you have a vote-me-down wish. –  Joe Blow May 17 at 11:31

I have rarely seen a blindingly-obvious-true-RTFM question here on SO. I think it is also a case of some people wanting to derive the pleasure of saying RTFM!

A seemingly foolish question if discussed and answered respectfully, can sometimes lead to great insight - and frequently benefits the person who answers with a stronger and deeper understanding.

In the history of Science and Technology, often the people who said RTFM were telling you to go and look at Established Truth. They were the Keepers of the Flame (the Manual), and were those who discouraged discussion and different 'foolish' perspectives from beginners - and missed the opportunity to discover the earth-shaking breakthroughs.


  • Galileo and the Catholic church establishment,

  • "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.[RTFM!]" - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

  • "If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.[RTFM!]" - Charles Kettering, GM

    quotes from http://amasci.com/weird/skepquot.html

But there are 8,000 new questions every day on SO and many of them are this type of question. If there is a stronger and deeper understanding being developed from these, it's very hard to see. –  Pekka 웃 May 11 at 4:40
@Pekka웃 If there is a stronger and deeper understanding, you will likely not see it. It is the people who interact with open minds, are the ones who will benefit. –  likejiujitsu May 11 at 18:47
@Pekka웃 I apologize for any misunderstanding - I am not implying that you have a closed mind –  likejiujitsu May 14 at 1:56
no offense taken! –  Pekka 웃 May 14 at 8:42
You're not wrong here, but you're missing the point. The SO questions to which this would apply are not intriguing puzzles with opportunities for creative discovery; they're "how do i concatenate a string in xcode?" We're not talking about Science in this case -- we're talking about basic craftsmanship. –  Josh Caswell May 14 at 17:32
"They laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan. –  James King May 24 at 5:36
@JoshCaswell I have rarely seen a blindingly obvious true RTFM question here on SO. I think it is also a case of some people wanting to derive the pleasure of saying RTFM! –  likejiujitsu May 24 at 13:24

No, because Googling is itself a skill that beginners often don't have, and you can't really blame them.

It takes a while to learn it and have it really sink in. I've been through it, I know. You probably have too.

Downvote. The explicit mission statement is that SO is "for professional and enthusiast programmers". Nowhere in there does it say this site is here to teach beginners the absolute basics - like the fact that there's documentation about their language/framework/library available and they should read it if they have any problems. And while you don't have to "blame" or flame them for this, you also shouldn't support their incompetence by spoon-feeding them bits and pieces from the docs. Better teach them to help themselves by pointing out they should read the official documentation first. –  l4mpi May 4 at 9:56
@l4mpi I agree with you, but one problem I've been through is that some documentation is unreadable, such as certain man-pages. Though, that's not the issue with the questions we're talking about. –  keyser May 4 at 10:09
@keyser I'd say it's totally OK to ask a question about not understanding the documentation, as long as it's clear that OP looked at and tried to understand the docs. Something like "this and that is ambiguous or hard to understand in the docs, can someone explain it in detail" is a perfectly acceptable question as it shows OP is willing to learn and trying to understand the subject at hand. –  l4mpi May 4 at 10:13
@l4mpi Yup. I'd like to see us cultivate such a culture. –  keyser May 4 at 10:14
@l4mpi: What part of "enthusiast programmer" excludes beginners? –  Mehrdad May 4 at 10:15
@Mehrdad I didn't say SO excludes beginners, but "enthusiast" IMO implies a desire to learn that includes searching for resources on their own. Now, if you say that some beginners are missing the skills to do so, that's too bad and they should be directed to resources that deal with learning these skills - but this is off-topic for SO, and should not be a reason for us to lower the quality standards we expect from questions. The help page and the downvote arrow explicitly state that we expect OP to do research; if OP is unable to do so this doesn't magically make his question acceptable. –  l4mpi May 4 at 10:38
I agree that Googling skill is not anyone has, and I can tolerate it if the search matter is quite hard in the first place. But given a mountainous amount of questions in SO, and some official references, if someone asks FAQ, I doubt he can use Google at all. Almost always if I google the title of a new (trivial) question, I get the solution on first page, and I just wish OP had already done that too. And that is not a basic skill in using Google? (This exempts some cases, like obscure reference from 3rd-party API) –  Andrew T. May 4 at 10:46
In my early days, I can remember doing countless searches and not finding anything, then asking in frustration only to be told to go RTFM. If you don't know what keywords to use, you won't find what you're looking for. Generally, once someone pointed me to the resource, I figured things out from there. Also, I stopped to ask myself how my search terms could be refined and improved. I appreciated the patience of those who helped and still remember those who weren't patient. It's easy to forget we were all new once. –  jmort253 May 4 at 18:37
To further @jmort253's point, I've seen high-quality questions just asking for which terms to look for in documentation. Here's a good one from Music.SE: music.stackexchange.com/questions/16304/… –  Kevin May 5 at 2:22
Apologize if my previous comment looked harsh. Perhaps, just because I'm one of people who don't really like asking questions (even in real life) makes me tries to find the answer by myself, including how to use better keyword. In fact, I didn't wholly disagree with this answer (I leave it neutral; no upvote/downvote). I agree that the linked-question on Kevin's comment is a good one, though I'm not sure that kind of questions can survive in SO. If anyone finds similar questions in SO counterpart, please do comment to convince me. –  Andrew T. May 5 at 2:44
@l4mpi: You reasoning is insentient. For my part, I once could code complete programs by scanning the books at my nearby library, yet lacked any websearch skills because the web was too new. Nowadays, this still may happen to anyone not gifted with enough money for internet access (or kids restricted by their parents), but (accidentally?) given the gift of an old computer with a compiler installed (e.g. by the uncle who brings a computer sorted out by his company). –  phresnel May 12 at 13:07
@phresnel had to google insentient; I guess I'm a cold, heartless machine fueled by downvotes and closed questions :) First of all, someone without internet access certainly won't ask questions on SO. Second, as stated countless times already, SO is NOT the place to learn the absolute basics of programming. Third, I'm not saying we shouldn't help people like this, but I'd help them by pointing out better approaches to learning and researching than asking the n-th duplicate, no (visible) effort, unclear question on SO; and help everybody else by not having to deal with one more such question. –  l4mpi May 12 at 13:18
"No, because Googling is itself a skill that beginners often don't have" - Well, they should. If you don't have that skill, learning it is more urgent than asking for programming help. "(...and you can't really blame them." - Yes you can. –  Renan May 14 at 21:03
I can only believe that the above answer was made in jest. Googling is a fundamental skill to both serious researchers and goof-off students who want to parrot an answer from the Internet rather than do their own work. I doubt that anyone can advance much beyond the 4th grade these days without becoming at least passably good at it. –  Hot Licks May 17 at 1:31
I believe you. I have no illusions, for I have seen it with my own eyes. I just don't know why we want to cater to these types of idiots. (I still disagree with the proposal, just for different reasons.) –  Cody Gray May 17 at 10:45

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